THE  REASON  OF  LIFE 


WORKS    BY 

W.  PORCHER  DU  BOSE,  M.A.,  S.T.D. 


The  Gospel  in  the  Gospels 
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LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO, 


The  Ecumenical  Councils 
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EDINBURGH:    T.  &  T.  CLARK 


THE    REASON  OF  LIFE 


BY 

WILLIAM  PORCHER  DuBosE,  M.A.,  S.T.D. 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  SOTERIOLOGY  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT' 
"THE   GOSPEL   IN   THE  GOSPELS/'    "THE   GOSPEL 
ACCORDING  TO  ST.  PAUL,"  "HIGH  PRIEST- 
HOOD AND  SACRIFICE,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND  CO. 

39  PATERNOSTER  ROW,  LONDON 
NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1911 


COPYRIGHT,  1911 

BY 
LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 


All  rights  reserved  ~ 


THE- PLIMPTON- PRESS 

[  W-  D- O] 
NORWOOD  •  MASS  •  U  •  S  •  A 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  The  Principle  of  Unity  —  Introductory     ....  1 

II.  The  Beginning 12 

III.  The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life 24 

IV.  Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate 36 

V.  The  Glory  of  the  Only  Begotten 50 

^.x'VI.  Grace  to  become  Sons 62 

VII.  The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual 76 

VIII.  The  Spiritual  through  the  Natural 90 

IX.  Love  the  Seminal  Principle  of  Life 103 

X.  Divine  Love  in  Human  Service 115 

XI.  Christianity  a  Ministry  of  Life 126 

XII.  Fellowship  with  God 138 

XIII.  Christianity  as  a  Witness 154 

XIV.  The  Blood  that  Cleanseth 169 

XV.  The  Comfort  of  Christianity 183 

XVI.  The  Way  of  Divine  Knowledge 198 

XVU.  Whom  Else  but  God  ? 213 

XVIII.  What  Else  but  Christ  ? 229 

XIX.  The  Divinity  and  Deity  of  Jesus  Christ    ....  244 

XX.  Christianity  and  Ethics 260 


THE  REASON  OF  LIFE 
i 

THE   PRINCIPLE   OF   UNITY 

INTRODUCTORY 

REVOLUTIONS,  internal  or  external,  in  thought  or  in 
action,  do  not  come  except  in  a  time  or  under  condi- 
tions that  have  been  prepared  and  are  ripe  for  them. 
We  are  expected  and  commanded  to  be  able  to  read 
the  signs  of  the  time.  It  is  as  criminal  not  to  seize 
and  use  beneficent  opportunity  at  its  flood,  as  it  is 
futile  to  exploit  it  at  its  ebb.  We  are  moving  now 
upon  a  very  flood  tide  of  opportunity.  The  thought 
of  the  world  is  upon  and  the  demand  of  the  time  is 
for  unity.  We  have  entered  upon  an  era  of  recon- 
ciliation and  cooperation. 

This  is  evident  in  the  most  secular  affairs  of  the 
world.  The  abolition  of  war  may  be  many  ages  off, 
but  there  has  never  been  anything  like  such  a  move- 
ment in  the  direction  of  it  as  we  are  now  witnessing. 
So  profound  and  general  a  raising  of  the  question  of 
arbitration  and  peace  is  in  itself  the  surest  prognostic 
of  a  progressive  approximation  to  its  solution  such  as 
will  be  at  least  the  diminution  and  amelioration  if 
not  the  actual  extinction  of  war. 
2  1 


2  The  Reason  of  Life 

So  no  less  with  economic  and  industrial  warfare. 
The  clash  of  capital  and  labor,  of  organized  and  free 
employment,  of  privilege  and  equality,  of  special  and 
general  interests,  may  be  sounding  louder  than  ever, 
but  it  is  because  the  knell  of  all  inequitable  inequalities, 
and  inevitable  consequent  strife,  has  been  struck.  The 
movement  to  meet  and  treat  the  disease  in  its  source, 
to  abolish  industrial  warfare  by  removing  its  cause  in 
patent  injustice,  may  not  mean  immediate  and  univer- 
sal equity  and  peace,  but  it  does  mean  just  as  rapidly 
more  of  these  as  the  really  growing  sympathy  and 
fairness  of  men  shall  achieve. 

But  it  is  the  spirit  of  reconciliation  in  a  wider 
field  —  that  of  religion  —  with  which  I  am  at  present 
concerned.  Not  that  the  field  of  religion  is  sep- 
arable from  or  does  not  include  all  these  secular 
questions  and  interests;  nor  that  any  reconciliation, 
any  unity  and  cooperation,  based  upon  the  one  only 
rock  of  love,  of  mutual  service  and  sacrifice,  is  not  in 
itself  religion.  On  the  contrary,  religion  is  not,  and  will 
not  be,  either  its  true  self  or  all  itself,  until  all  minds 
and  hearts,  all  social  relations  and  personal  interactivi- 
ties of  men,  have  become  the  Kingdom  of  God:  until 
all  life,  individual  or  collective,  industrial,  political, 
national  and  international,  has  been  taken  into  and 
become  its  sphere. 

Such  a  unity,  it  may  be  felt,  is  not  for  men  but  gods. 
But  even  a  pagan  philosophy  bids  us  not,  because  we 
are  mortal,  to  rest  in  or  be  satisfied  with  mortality,  nor 
because  we  are  human  to  ignore  or  neglect  the  manifest 


The  Principle  of  Unity  3 

divine  that  is  in  us.  Neither  human  reason  nor  the 
human  conscience  can  set  a  limit  to  itself  short  of 
Eternity,  Infinity,  and  Perfection.  No  matter  how 
we  may  conceive  or  define  the  Divine,  human  life  has 
no  end  or  meaning  but  in  that  unity  and  complete- 
ness which  only  Love  is,  and  which  we  can  all  agree 
hi  worshipping  as  God.  There  is  no  impracticability 
in  such  an  ideal  except  that  of  bringing  ourselves  to 
believe  in  and  act  upon  it.  That  done,  we  should  be 
quick  and  certain  to  find  in  it  the  one  only  principle 
that  would  make  life  really,  perfectly,  and  blessedly 
practicable  and  realizable. 

But  I  come  down  to  the  familiar  conflicts  and  dis- 
sonances of  religion  as  they  are  popularly  understood 
—  such  as,  for  example,  that  between  religion  and 
science.  If  there  be  any  actual  conflict  between  these, 
otherwise  than  in  our  apprehensions  of  them,  it  goes 
down  beneath  the  thoughts  of  men  (which  science  and 
religion  are)  into  the  eternal  nature  and  reality  of  things. 
The  issue,  we  may  safely  assume,  has  passed  beyond 
that  first  stage  of  it  in  which  the  question  was  whether 
in  the  new  light  of  science  there  was  any  place  left  for 
religion  at  all.  There  is  consensus  now  both  as  to  the 
objective  ground  and  the  subjective  need  of  religion. 
Controversy  has  narrowed  down  to  the  relation  between 
the  immanent  presence  and  operation  of  God  in  things, 
which  we  call  nature,  and  the  transcendent  presence 
and  operation  of  God  with  and  in  men,  which  we  call 
grace.  The  growing  reconciliation  between  nature 
and  grace  is,  we  must  admit,  due  more  to  the  insistences 


4  The  Reason  of  Life 

of  science  than  to  the  wisdom  or  reasonableness  of 
current  religion.  The  latter,  in  its  wide  separation 
tending  to  the  divorce  of  grace  from  nature,  was  in  a 
fair  way  of  contracting  itself  to  final  exclusion  from  the 
world  of  the  actual.  In  being  brought  more  and  more 
to  recognize  the  essential  naturalness  and  orderliness 
of  grace,  it  has  more  than  gained  in  coming  to  see  the 
co-essential  supernaturalness  of  nature:  and  so  to 
anticipate,  if  not  yet  construe  and  understand,  the 
ultimate  unity  and  identity  of  the  two.  Thus  religion, 
rescued  by  science  from  the  danger  of  exclusion  from 
the  earth,  is  enabled  to  turn  and  show  itself  inclusive 
of  all  the  earth. 

It  is  only  an  extension  of  the  above  to  say  a  more 
general  word  upon  the  reconciliation  of  the  conflicts 
between  the  counter  truths  of  immanence  and  tran- 
scendence. These  truths  we  have  been  brought  per- 
force to  see  as  not  only  counter  but  also  complementary. 
The  power  which  is  neither  nature  nor  ourselves,  but 
formative  and  constitutive  principle  of  both,  is  neces- 
sarily immanent  and  immanently  necessary  in  nature 
—  for  otherwise  nature  would  not  be  nature  in  its  most 
essential  attribute  of  fixed  and  reliable  uniformity. 
And  it  is  only  in  such  an  objective  nature  of  constant 
invariability  that  we  could  possess  or  exercise  our  free- 
dom. But  there  is  no  more  reason  why  the  power  that 
is  nature  should  not  also  be  a  power  that  is  not  nature, 
than  that  we  who  are  in  and  of  nature  should  not  also 
be  above,  or  transcend,  nature  —  as  we  know  we  do. 
There  are  in  fact  two  truths  which  stand  or  fall  together : 


The  Principle  of  Unity  5 

One  is  God  in  nature  and  yet  transcending  nature; 
the  other  is  human  freedom  and  personality  as  part  of 
nature,  and  yet,  in  the  fact  and  exercise  of  selfhood, 
transcending  nature.  In  making  God's  personality 
and  our  own  thus  dependent  upon  each  other,  in  our 
conception  of  them,  we  are  not  making  God's  per- 
sonality only  what  ours  is:  whatever  be  the  infinite 
difference,  His  must  include  all  that  ours  is. 

There  is  a  kindred  reconciliation  to  be  effected  in 
philosophy  between  the  rival  claims  of  idealism  and 
pragmatism.  Is  religion  an  a  priori  fact  or  truth,  to 
be  ascertained  and  applied  to  human  life?  Or  is  it 
an  o  posteriori  result  deduced  from  and  determined  by 
human  life?  Is  it  whatever  will  perfect  life  and  all  its 
functions,  as  determined  by  experience?  Or  is  it  an 
antecedent  and  definite  something,  the  knowledge  and 
realization  of  which  hi  human  life  will  perfect  it  and 
its  functions?  Is  there  any  reason  why  it  may  not  be 
both?  It  is  not  a  question  of  what  religion  is:  both 
agree  that  it  is  what  perfects  life  and  all  its  functions. 
It  is  only  the  question  of  how  what  is  religion  is  ascer- 
tained or  known.  And  with  regard  to  this,  whatever 
may  be  the  value  of  pragmatism,  it  is  as  useless  and 
impossible  without  idealism  as,  for  example,  either 
deduction  or  induction  would  be  without  the  other. 
We  may  as  well  speak  of  the  conflict  or  contradiction 
between  hypothesis  and  verification  as  that  between 
idealism  and  pragmatism.  I  have  long  known  that 
the  final  and  only  convincing  proof  of  religion  is  the 
experience  of  what  will  perfect  and  complete  human 


6  The  Reason  of  Life 

life.  But  pragmatism,  I  should  say,  is  not  a  source 
but  only  a  test  of  the  rival  claims  that  bid  for  the  lord- 
ship or  mastery  of  human  life.  It  is  a  fact  that  we  are 
practically  making  truth  and  life  as  we  go,  by  incor- 
porating into  them  in  experience  the  things  that  make 
for  them.  But  whence  do  we  derive  the  manifold 
material  which  experience  tests  and  sifts  and  excludes 
or  includes  as  it  finds  it  unfit  or  fit?  Experience  tries 
all  things  and  uses  or  disuses,  but  never  originates  or 
creates.  Certainly  in  that  fullest  life  which  we  call 
eternal,  pragmatism,  as  experimentation  and  deter- 
mination of  values,  is  in  need,  for  the  source  and 
supply  of  the  theories  or  hypotheses  upon  which  it  is 
to  pass  judgments  preparatory  to  inclusion  or  exclu- 
sion, of  the  very  highest  and  purest  idealism. 

Religion  is  the  most  experimental  of  all  sciences. 
Our  Lord  was  the  most  thoroughgoing  of  pragmatists. 
"Do,"  He  says,  "and  ye  shall  know."  If  any  man 
will  live  the  true  life,  he  will  know  that  the  life  he  lives 
is  the  true  one  by  its  completeness  and  blessedness. 
But  he  must  have  an  idea,  or  hypothesis,  of  the  true 
life  as  he  lives  it,  and  where  does  it  come  from? 
Would  it  come  at  all  if  there  were  no  idealism?  We 
are  to  "set  to  our  own  seal"  even  to  the  fact  that 
God  Himself  "is  true"  —  but  where  do  we  get  the 
idea  that  God  is  true,  to  which  we  are  to  give  the 
attestation  of  our  experience?  Given  idealism  as  a 
source  of  ideas,  not  only  of  conjecture  and  adventure 
from  within,  but  of  inspiration  and  revelation  from 
without  —  and  then  pragmatism  is  not  only  in  order, 


The  Principle  of  Unity  7 

but  is  the  only  true  order  of  human  truth  or  life.  God 
and  Christianity  appeal  to  no  other  ultimate  proof  of 
themselves  than  the  fact  of  their  inherent  and  essential 
truth  as  attested  by  experience.  The  only  convincing 
argument  for  God  is  found  in  the  realized  fact  that 
"to  know  Him  is  to  live,  and  to  serve  Him  is  to  be 
free."  The  only  credential  of  Jesus  Christ  is  the  fact 
that  He  is  "the  Way  and  the  Truth"  —  the  only  way 
and  the  perfect  truth  of  "Life" :  the  life  of  God  in  man 
and  of  man  in  God.  Religion  can  never  cease  to  sub- 
mit itself  to  the  perpetual  judgment  of  human  experi- 
ence; nor  experience  to  be  directly  responsible  and 
accountable  for  its  recognition  of  the  reality  of  religion. 
They  exist  for  each  other,  and  their  unity  is  the  only 
solution  of  the  question  of  life  and  destiny. 

There  is  another  conflict  just  now  being  waged  within 
the  ranks  and  under  the  banner  of  Christianity,  which 
can  be  settled  only  by  reconciliation,  and  not  by  victory 
or  defeat  on  either  part.  It  is  the  question  between 
the  merely  human  divinity  and  the  real  deity  of  the 
person  of  Jesus  Christ.  In  this  controversy  each  side, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  honestly  and  sincerely  Christian,  is 
contending  for  the  true  half  of  a  really  indivisible 
whole;  and  the  truth  in  each  is  included  in  and  essential 
to  that  of  the  other.  Christianity  is  nothing  if  it  is 
not  our  identical  and  common  humanity  in  the  person 
of  the  man  Christ  Jesus  coming  (and  come)  by  the 
necessary  human  process  into  the  full  realization  and 
inheritance  of  its  inherent  divinity  and  divine  Sonship. 
Nor  could  Christianity  be  this,  if  it  were  not  also  and 


8  The  Reason  of  Life 

no  less,  on  the  other  hand,  God  Himself  self-realizing 
(and  realized)  in  our  humanity  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  there  taking  us  all  into  a  living  union  and 
unity  with  Himself.  I  can  see  myself  and  all  humanity 
in  every  individual  act  or  incident  of  the  human  life 
of  our  Lord  —  but  also  I  can  see  all  of  God,  and  all 
that  is  divinest  and  best  of  God,  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ  reconciling  and  uniting  the  world  unto  Himself. 
How  shall  I  know  Him  or  express  Him?  As  deified 
humanity,  or  as  humanized  Deity?  I  believe  that  I 
can  know  Him  as  neither  without  knowing  Him  as 
both.  The  unity  of  two  must  be  both  and  each.  If 
I  cannot  find  God  as  well  as  myself  in  Christ,  I  can  see 
and  know  Him  nowhere  at  all. 

I  might  multiply  indefinitely  these  illustrations  in 
part  of  a  general  process  of  reconciliation  going  on 
among  or  around  us,  but  let  us  go  behind  them  to  one 
that  includes  them  all.  The  ultimate  and  essential 
unity  is  that  of  spirit.  God  Himself  is  "One,  in  the 
unity  of  spirit."  In  the  first  place  "God  is  Spirit  — 
and  they  that  worship  Him  must  worship  in  spirit 
and  in  truth."  Spirit  is  something  infinitely  more 
than  mere  incorporeality,  freedom  from  "body,  parts, 
or  passions. "  The  spirit  of  God  or  of  any  other  being, 
"the  spirit  that  one  is  of,"  is  the  totality  of  one's  atti- 
tude or  disposition  towards  all  other  being.  It  is  in 
this  sense  that  we  say  that  the  Spirit  of  God,  or  that 
God  Himself,  is  Love.  God  as  manifested  to  us  is 
expressed  in  terms  of  eternal,  infinite,  perfect  love, 
grace,  and  fellowship  (or  oneness  with).  Love  is 


The  Principle  of  Unity  9 

Himself;  Grace  is  love  or  Himself  revealed,  communi- 
cated, and  imparted  in  Christ  Jesus;  Fellowship  is  all 
these  received,  shared,  become  ours  in  the  unity  of  a 
common  spirit,  with  God  and  Christ  and  with  one 
another  in  Them. 

The  Kingdom  of  God  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  organized 
and  ordered  unity  —  unity  with  God  and  unity  in  God, 
unity  of  spirit,  of  law,  of  life.  And  the  Church  of  God 
is  no  living  thing  if  it  is  not  something  more  than  human 
organization — the  divine  organism  and  organ  of  unity 
human  and  divine.  Unity  is  absolutely  the  first  and 
the  one  thing:  what  is  Love  but  oneness  with  God  and 
with  all  else  in  Him?  The  Church  is  first  "One"  — 
and  then,  and  therefore,  "Holy";  for  what  is  holiness 
but  the  spirit  of  unity  and  love?  Then,  next,  it  is 
"Catholic,"  for  catholicity  or  universality  is  the  nec- 
essary corollary  of  unity.  And  finally  it  is  "  Apos- 
tolic," simply  because  that  which  is  one,  must  be  so 
in  sequence  or  time,  as  well  as  in  extension  or  space  — 
from  beginning  to  end,  as  well  as  from  end  to  end.  In 
no  less  truth  than  all  this  is  the  Church  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  the  Body  of  Christ,  or  the  Temple  of  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

Expediency,  efficiency,  economy,  success  as  against 
failure,  very  existence  as  against  threatened  extinction, 
the  last  will  and  prayer  and  command  of  our  Lord 
Himself,  every  dictate  of  common  sense  and  impulse  of 
common  humanity,  ought  surely  to  furnish  reasons 
enough  and  arguments  enough  for  unity  in  Christianity. 
And  these  considerations  have  sufficed  to  turn  all  the 


10  The  Reason  of  Life 

spirits  and  signs  of  the  time  in  the  direction  of  unity, 
and  to  make  it  the  one  problem  and  task  of  the  age. 
But  it  is  evident  too  that  we  have  to  go  further  back 
and  deeper  down  than  all  these  for  the  solution  of  the 
problem  thus  raised,  for  a  reason  cogent  enough  to 
compel  and  to  preserve  unity.  We  need  to  be  brought 
to  realize  that  religion  and  unity,  that  preeminently 
Christianity  and  unity,  are  identical  things :  we  cannot 
sacrifice  or  surrender  the  one  and  preserve  or  possess 
the  other.  The  Church,  the  Community  and  Com- 
munion of  the  Saints,  the  Body  of  Christ,  the  Organ  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  is  the  unity  of  Christians  with  Christ, 
and  with  one  another  in  Christ. 

The  issue  is  fairly  raised  between  the  necessity  of 
Christian  unity  and  the  fact  of  Christian  divisions. 
The  subordinate  reconciliations  that  have  to  be  effected 
before  the  oneness  of  the  spirit  shall  find  practical  and 
visible  expression  in  the  unity  of  the  Body  of  Christ,  it 
might  be  discouraging  to  enumerate.  The  old  question 
of  the  one  and  the  many,  unity  in  diversity  and  diver- 
sity in  unity,  will  have  to  be  practically  settled  in  this 
large  and  difficult  application  of  it.  The  adjustment 
between  objective  divine  claims  and  subjective  human 
verification  and  consent,  between  corporate  or  catholic 
authority  and  personal  or  party  rights  and  liberties,  and 
many  other  such  issues,  will  have  to  be  met  and  dealt 
with  in  detail.  The  first  step,  which  will  alone  make 
the  others  possible,  seems  to  be  the  only  one  at  present 
proposed,  and  may  be  formulated  as  follows: 

First.  Let  unity  be  accepted  by  all  as  the  principle 


The  Principle  of  Unity  11 

and  essence  of  Christianity,  and  faith  in  it,  hope  of  it, 
and  effort  for  it  become  the  duty  of  every  Christian. 

Second.  Let  each  separate  name  or  body  of  Chris- 
tians realize  and  emphasize  as  much  as  possible  what  it 
has  in  common  with  the  one  whole  Church  of  Christ, 
and  efface  as  far  as  possible  all  divisive  and  individual  or 
party  elements,  badges,  or  expressions. 

Third.  Where  differences  are  felt  to  be  vital  or  impor- 
tant, let  them  be  held  in  trust  for  all  and  not  arrogated 
as  the  possession  of  a  few  or  a  part. 

Fourth.  Let  there  be  as  much  as  possible  of  Christian 
intercourse,  interchange,  and  cooperation;  and  in  all 
conferences  let  there  be  the  utmost  of  plain-speaking 
with  as  much  as  possible  of  mutual  understanding  and 
charity;  let  all  the  truth  be  spoken  as  each  sees  it,  but 
let  it  be  spoken  in  all  the  love  of  Christ. 

The  present  volume  has  no  practical  solutions  to  offer 
for  the  problems  touched  upon  in  this  chapter.  It  goes 
before  them  all,  and  would  only  prepare  and  propose 
the  spirit  and  temper  in  which  they  should  be  under- 
taken and  may  be  solved. 


n 

THE  BEGINNING 

ST.    JOHN    I.     1-3 

THE  Beginning  described  by  St.  John  in  the  prologue 
to  his  Gospel  is  manifestly  the  absolute  beginning,  the 
origination  of  all  being  or  existence  in  the  universe  in 
which  we  find  ourselves.  It  is  a  logical  rather  than 
chronological  conception;  the  "all  things"  included  in 
it,  in  their  successive  "becomings,"  may  have  had  no 
actual  beginning  at  all  in  time;  we  cannot  conceive  of 
them  as  without  beginning  in  thought,  or  without 
causal  beginning.  In  whatever  sense  "  Being  "  is  eternal, 
it  is  not  without  apxq  or  principium,  without  some 
principle"  of  being.  The  Beginning  we  are  to  discuss 
is  causative  and  constitutive,  and  not  merely  initiative. 

In  what  we  may  call  either  creation  or  evolution 
there  is,  in  the  language  of  an  older  philosophy,  "form" 
as  well  as  "  matter."  Which  of  the  two  is  prior,  and  is 
cause  or  beginning  of  the  other;  whether  form  is  but 
the  incident  or  accident  of  matter,  or  matter  is  but 
the  visibility  or  sensible  expression  of  form,  may  be 
a  question.  The  concrete  universe  is  to  appearance 
what  we  call  material;  but  there  is  in  it,  we  cannot  but 
see,  a  reason,  a  meaning,  a  purpose,  which  we  may  call 
its  "form."  Is  this  "form,"or  immanent  reason,  an 

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The  Beginning  13 

incidental  or  accidental  product  of  matter,  or  is  it  the 
real  °-PXn,  an  ideal  informing  principle,  manifesting 
itself  through  and  as  matter?  In  a  word,  is  eternal 
Reason  the  cause  of  matter,  or  is  reason  a  late  by- 
product of  eternal  Matter? 

What  St.  John  has  to  say  upon  the  point  is  as  follows: 
That  rationality  is  the  prius  and  principle  of  material- 
ity, as  of  all  being  or  existence,  visible  and  invisible. 
The  material  universe  is  a  concrete  expression  of  an 
ideal  principle,  which  not  only  as  first-cause  gives  it 
existence,  but  as  final-cause  gives  it  reason,  meaning, 
and  purpose.  Indeed  Final  Cause  or  Purpose  is  the 
only  first-cause  or  ultimate  real  cause  at  all:  through 
it,  and  it  alone,  all  things  come  into  being  and  have 
their  being.  There  is  no  origination  or  initiation  save 
in  reason :  the  reason  of  a  thing  is  the  sole  actual  cause 
of  it.  "In  the  beginning  was  Eternal  Reason  —  intel- 
ligence, will,  purpose.  All  things  came  into  being 
through  it;  and  without,  or  apart  from  it,  nothing  that 
exists  had  its  being."  The  Reason  of  the  universe 
does  not  work  in  or  upon  its  matter  as  a  material 
or  stuff  already  in  existence,  or  existing  independently 
of  itself.  Primal  Reason  not  only  gives  form  to  mat- 
ter, but  itself  furnishes  the  matter  which  it  informs. 

Reason  is  in  large  part  conceived  and  expressed  by 
us  in  terms  of  the  abstract  and  impersonal.  We  see 
reason  in  many  a  mere  "thing"  as  something  immanent 
in  it  and  itself  impersonal.  But  for  the  descriptive 
and  explanatory  clauses  in  which  St.  John  affirms  its 
divine  personality,  we  might  indeed  so  translate  it  in 


14  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  passage  before  us:  "In  the  beginning  was  reason,  or 
meaning  and  purpose;  through  it  all  things  came  into 
existence  and  have  their  being."  From  our  lower  point 
of  view  there  is  no  cause  why  6  Aoyos  should  be  regarded 
as  a  Person,  why  it  should  be  "He"  rather  than  "it." 
What,  and  why,  is  our  lower  point  of  view?  How 
is  it  that  so  many  thinkers  are  ready  to  recognize  reason 
in  the  order  of  the  world  as  the  principle  and  cause  of 
its  being  as  well  as  of  its  order  —  who  nevertheless 
hesitate  to  ascribe  the  world-reason  to  a  Person,  or  to 
call  it  God?  Is  not  this  the  explanation:  That  from 
our  lower  plane  of  understanding  we  are  accustomed  to 
see  reason  in  things  seemingly  detached  and  separate 
from  its  personal  source;  and  so  come  to  treat  it  as 
itself  a  mere  "  thing  "  immanent  in  "  things  "?  A 
wise  and  able  organizer  or  an  inventive  genius  may 
embody  in  an  institution,  a  constitution,  or  even  in 
a  machine,  rational  principles  of  action  or  motion 
which  might  then  survive  their  author  and,  as  we 
say,  run  themselves.  Similarly,  men  come  to  recog- 
nize reason  in  the  universe,  not  merely  as  detached 
from  its  Author  and  running  itself,  but  even  as  inde- 
pendent of  any  personal  source  —  itself  a  thing  im- 
manent in  things.  That  what  emanates  from  us  — 
even  the  reason  and  order  to  which  we  have  given 
permanent  expression  and  form  —  may  then  go  on 
after  us  and  without  us,  should  not  lead  to  the  infer- 
ence'that  God's  thought  or  will  or  purpose  may  like- 
wise be  detached  from  and  go  on  independently  of 
Himself.  What  proceeds  from  us  is  but  rearrange- 


The  Beginning  15 

ment  of  already  existent  and  interacting  things;  what 
proceeds  from  Him  is  existence  and  interaction. 

The  reason  that  is  before  all  things,  and  is  the  formal 
and  formative  principle  of  all,  St.  John  neither  leaves 
in  the  air  nor  ascribes  to  the  things  themselves. 
Reason  appertains  to  personality  and  is  inseparable 
from  it;  they  are  distinguishable  the  one  from  the  other 
only  as  personality  is  the  necessary  subject  of  reason, 
and  reason  the  proper  function  of  personality.  The 
only  excusable  agnosticism  is  that  which  too  much 
distrusts  its  own  reason :  which  sees  in  the  Subject  of 
the  eternal  reason  One  who  cannot  be  bounded  by  a 
concept  or  expressed  by  a  name.  St.  John  does  not 
hesitate  to  ascribe  the  reason  that  is  before  all  and 
is  cause  of  all  to  a  Person  and  call  Him  God.  In 
ascribing  our  own  personality  to  God,  and  so  invest- 
ing Him  with  the  most  and  the  best  that  we  are  our- 
selves, we  may  be,  and  are,  designating  Him  by  what 
is  infinitely  less  than  Himself;  we  are  certainly  not 
ascribing  to  Him  anything  more  than  Himself,  or 
anything  that  He  is  not. 

St.  John  identifies  the  reason  of  the  world  with  God, 
just  as  the  reason  of  a  man  is  identical  with  his  person- 
ality and  inseparable  from  his  personality  or  himself. 
But  there  is  a  sense  and  a  respect  in  which,  as  has  been 
suggested,  a  man's  reason  is  separable  from  himself. 
When  I  have  put  myself  into  a  work,  or  have  put  my 
mind  into  a  written  argument,  which  are  to  survive 
me  and  even  be  potent  when  I  no  longer  am  in  existence, 
what  I  have  put  into  these  is  certainly  I,  and  yet  as 


16  The  Reason  of  Life 

certainly  not  I.  I  say,  It  is  not  I  but  my  mind,  my 
thought,  my  will;  but  are  not  all  these  myself?  Now 
when  I  have  so  uttered  or  outered  myself,  the  utterance 
may,  as  we  see,  be  so  detached  from  me  as  to  be  inde- 
pendent of  even  my  continued  existence.  So  likewise, 
with  a  momentous  difference,  the  world  is  God's 
utterance  or  outerance  of  Himself.  The  ideal,  formal, 
formative  principle  in  it,  which  we  see  so  struggling, 
and  often  seemingly  so  ineffectually  struggling,  for 
adequate  and  full  expression  through  it,  is  nevertheless 
His  Logos,  or  Reason,  or  Word  —  which  is  Himself. 
But,  for  manifold  reasons  manifest  to  thought  when 
carried  out  to  its  just  conclusions,  it  is  as  essential  to 
distinguish  the  reason  or  word  of  God  as  ideal  and 
formative  principle  of  the  world,  and  immanent  in  it, 
from  God  Himself,  as  it  is  to  identify  it  with  Him.  It 
might  be  said  that  the  failure  to  properly  distinguish 
is  pantheism,  the  failure  to  properly  identify  is  deism; 
while  the  proper  adjustment  of  distinction  and  iden- 
tification is  a  true  theism.  The  problem  involved  is 
the  reconciliation  of  the  counter  truths  of  the  imma- 
nence and  transcendence  of  God.  The  difficulty  may 
be  primarily  a  metaphysical  one,  but  it  ends  also  in  a 
moral  one. 

The  law  of  evolution  in  its  later  and  higher  workings 
begins  to  reveal  its  reason  and  meaning.  All  processes 
are  best  read  and  understood  in  their  highest  reaches: 
it  is  the  end  that  interprets  and  explains  all  things. 
Science  and  religion  will  finally  meet  in  a  common  truth 
which  will  fully  justify  them  both.  The  principle  of 


The  Beginning  17 

religion  is  that  God  is  source  and  cause  of  all.  The 
principle  of  science,  which  is  wholly  evolutional,  is  that 
all  things  make  themselves,  become  what  they  are  by 
causes  and  processes  immanent  in  themselves,  and  that 
are  themselves.  One  law  or  method  of  being  and  be- 
coming does  indeed  run  through  all,  and  holds  or 
obtains  from  beginning  to  end;  but,  in  the  end,  it 
becomes  possible,  not  merely  to  read  the  meaning  of  the 
law,  but  to  discover  the  reason  for  its  immanence.  It 
may  take  inconceivably  long  to  do  so,  but  in  the  end 
it  grows  increasingly  clear  why  and  how,  with  equal 
truth  and  reason,  religion  is  able  to  say,  on  the  one 
hand,  "Final  Cause  is  principle  and  cause  of  all";  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  science  can  assert,  "All  things  come 
of  themselves  and  by  laws  of  their  own  from  which  all 
semblance  of  purpose  or  final  cause  must  be  rigorously 
excluded." 

The  solution  begins  to  appear  when  in  the  highest 
stage  of  evolution,  involving  the  higher  meaning  and 
destiny  of  man,  the  antinomy  takes  such  a  form,  for 
example,  as  the  following:  "Only  the  grace  of  God, 
through  Word  and  Spirit,  can  compass  the  proper 
destination  of  man";  "Only  man  himself,  by  his  own 
will  and  in  the  exercise  of  his  own  freedom,  can  accom- 
plish his  own  destiny."  How  can  these  apparently 
contradictory  propositions  be  both  justified  and  recon- 
ciled? Yet  they  are  equally  necessary  truths.  All 
along  the  seemingly  beginningless  and  endless  pro- 
cession of  evolution  there  confront  each  other  the 
rival  and  exclusive  claims  of  transcendent  meaning  and 
3 


18  The  Reason  of  Life 

purpose,  as  against  immanent  independence  of  extra- 
neous interference.  Through  and  out  of  the  long  reign 
of  necessity  there  emerges  at  last,  without  miracle,  the 
seeming  miracle  of  freedom  and  personality;  and  still, 
in  higher  and  higher  form,  one  law  runs  on  through 
all:  persons  like  things  must  make  themselves  through 
their  own  proper  reactions  upon  outward  circumstan- 
ces and  conditions:  creation  works  through  evolution, 
and  only  fitness  survives. 

All  transitions  from  lower  to  higher  —  from  inor- 
ganic to  organic,  or  from  non-life  to  life,  from  unreason 
to  reason,  from  necessity  to  freedom,  from  natural  to 
spiritual  —  are  mysterious  and  inexplicable  to  us;  but 
there  is  no  occasion  to  doubt  that  God's  processes  of 
creation,  natural  and  spiritual,  are  continuous  and 
unbroken.  The  unity  of  the  law  may  be  expressed  in 
the  fact  that  all  things,  from  atom  to  man,  assume 
their  form  and  become  themselves  through  an  imma- 
nent principle  of  self -adjustment  to  external  conditions : 
the  successfully  adjusted  survive,  and  the  unadjusted 
perish.  The  fact  that  in  the  lower  order  of  things  the 
so-called  self-adjustment  is  a  mechanical  reaction, 
while  in  the  higher  activity  of  persons  it  is  an  exercise 
of  reason  and  freedom,  is  only  one  of  the  mysteries  of 
evolution  which  remain  unrevealed  to  us  and  unex- 
plained by  us.  We  see  the  reason  of  the  principle  that 
"things  are  made  to  make  themselves,"  to  make  or 
mar  themselves  by  acquired  fitness  or  unfitness — only 
there  where  the  reason  of  things  becomes  truly  apparent 
in  its  most  evolved  and  highest  working,  in  the  des- 


The  Beginning  19 

tiny  of  man  to  be  rational  and  free  and  personal.  For 
the  essence  of  rationality,  freedom,  and  personality  is 
selfhood,  and  that  comes  only  through  the  evolution 
of  the  self  through  progressive  self-action.  Man  is 
made  through  being  made  to  make  himself. 

We  begin  in  this  way  to  see  why  the  reason  of  things, 
of  creation,  of  evolution  —  while  in  fact  it  is  the  Reason 
of  God,  and  so  is  God — nevertheless  needs  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  God.  Reason  in  God  comes  from 
Itself,  and  is  the  principle,  the  effective  beginning  and 
constitutive  cause  of  all  processes  of  creation  or  evolu- 
tion. Reason  in  the  world  comes  only  to  itself,  in  the 
end,  and  after  long  processes  of  evolution.  Thus  that 
which  was  for  God  the  beginning,  for  the  world  is 
the  end :  reason  in  God  is  eternally  complete  and  per- 
fect; reason  in  the  world  is  incomplete,  imperfect,  and 
progressive:  it  has  to  make  and  remake  itself  through 
deaths  and  births;  to  become  itself  through  a  thousand 
self-contradictions  which  have  to  be  survived  and  over- 
come. There  is  a  deity  immanent  in  the  world  which 
is  God,  and  yet  is  not  God:  which  as  God  cannot  be 
thwarted  or  defeated,  and  yet  which,  unlike  God,  is 
constantly  thwarted  and  defeated,  is  resisted,  grieved, 
quenched  in  ourselves,  blasphemed  and  contradicted 
in  the  world  without  us.  It  is  6c6$,  because  as  the  mind 
or  the  will  or  the  honor  of  God,  it  is  inseparable  from 
Himself  and  is  therefore  He;  but  it  is  not  6  ^eos, because 
that  which  is  immanent  in,  and  therefore  wholly  con- 
tained by,  the  incomplete  and  imperfect,  cannot  be 
God  who  is  perfect  and  complete.  The  Logos  in  God 


20  The  Reason  of  Life 

and  the  logos  or  reason  that  is  the  immanent,  ideal, 
formative  principle  in  the  world  are  one  and  the  same; 
and  that  One,  therefore,  is  capable  of  being  at  once 
perfect  and  first  in  God,  and  yet  imperfect  and  last 
in  the  world,  while  still  God  in  both.  But  what  may 
be  said  of  God  as  predicate  —  as  0«os  —  cannot  be  said 
of  Him  as  subject  —  as  6  0eos.  It  is  true  that  the  Logos 
is  God;  it  may  be  true  that  that  which  is  incomplete 
and  imperfect  is  God :  there  is  that  of  divine  reason  and 
meaning  and  purpose  in  ourselves  which,  however 
inchoate  and  partial,  is  still  God.  But  it  is  not  true 
even  to  say  that  God  is  the  Logos;  and  of  course  infi- 
nitely less  true  to  say  that  He  is  incomplete  or  imper- 
fect. If  it  be  still  asked,  How  can  the  Logos  who  is 
God  be  incomplete  or  imperfect?  I  answer  that  He 
is  so  hi  the  world,  as  its  growing  and  self-revealing 
reason  and  meaning  and  end  or  purpose;  but  God's 
reason  in  and  of  the  world  is  not  other  than  His  Reason 
in  and  of  Himself.  These  may  be  difficult  thoughts, 
but  they  are  none  the  less  necessary  thoughts:  the 
immanence  and  the  transcendence  of  God  are  equal 
and  correlative  necessities  of  thought.  Immanence 
is  an  absurdity  and  impossibility  in  and  by  itself. 
Reason  "coming-to-itself "  at  the  end  of  a  process  of 
self-evolution  is  explicable  or  possible  only  as  coming 
from  Itself  at  the  beginning  of  the  process.  The  time 
is  not  quite  yet  to  attempt  to  explain  why  not  only 
must  divine  reason  pass  through  human  or  creature 
unreason  in  order  in  it  too  to  fulfil  itself,  but  divine 
right  and  good  must  pass  through  the  ordeal  of  human 


The  Beginning  21 

wrong  and  evil  in  order  to  become  human  as  well  as 
divine,  ours  as  well  as  God's. 

It  is  well  to  observe  how  St.  John,  in  the  passage 
which  furnishes  our  present  text,  while  ascribing  all 
becoming  or  coming-into-being  to  the  Word  of  God, 
and  incidentally  discriminating  between  the  eternal 
emu  and  the  temporal  yeve'o-ftu —  yet  tacitly  describes 
all  beginning  or  origination  as  a  becoming,  rather  than 
as  a  new  creation.  Things  are  born  and  grow  by  an 
immanent  law  and  process  of  their  own;  they  are  not 
made  and  added  or  inserted  by  transcendent  act  from 
without.  The  world,  as  we  are  being  reminded,  is  not 
a  manufacture  or  mechanism  like  a  watch;  it  is  an 
organic  birth  and  growth  like  a  flower.  Things  are 
made  to  make  themselves.  I  repeat  that  the  highest 
working  and  the  fullest  reason  of  the  law  appears, 
when  the  highest  thing,  as  man,  is  made  consciously 
and  freely  to  make  himself,  and  by  so  knowing  and 
having  life  in  himself  to  become  what  he  is,  finite 
spirit  and  person.  The  transition  is  accomplished  in 
the  appearance  of  self-consciousness  and  self  deter- 
mination, in  the  birth  of  the  relatively  independent 
and  responsible  self. 

Thus  Reason,  Spirit,  Life,  while  eternally  with  God 
and  themselves  God,  were  nevertheless  born  and  made 
to  become  themselves  anew  in  the  time-process  of  the 
world.  Creation,  in  man  as  its  head,  was  through  the 
world-movement  of  evolution  to  return  to  its  Source 
and  at-one  itself  with  God  in  the  person  of  the  God- 
man.  It  is  not  going  too  far  to  say  that  God,  who  is 


22  The  Reason  of  Life 

eternally  Himself  in  His  transcendence,  in  His  imma- 
nence "comes  to"  or  becomes  Himself,  in  the  per- 
fection of  His  relation  to  the  world,  only  by  the  act 
and  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ. 

God  in  the  world  was  prior  to  and  part  of  the  fuller 
truth  of  God  in  the  flesh :  He  was  in  the  world  as  Logos 
before  He  was  born  into  and  lived  in  humanity  as  Son. 
Neither  of  these  involved  a  kenosis  in  the  objectionable 
and  impossible  sense  which  has  been  attached  to  the 
term.  The  reason,  meaning,  or  purpose  which  so 
inchoately  and  imperfectly  is  working  itself  out  in  the 
slow  unfolding  of  the  universe  —  is  none  the  less  God. 
The  Sonship  which  is  determining  man  to  and  is  to 
constitute  his  destiny  —  is  of  God,  and  is  God.  The 
Spirit  which  so  incompletely  and  imperfectly  manifests 
itself  in  and  as  our  spirit  —  is,  for  all  that,  God's  Spirit, 
and  is  God.  The  Life  of  God  which  as  our  life  is  so 
weak  and  poor  —  is  still  God's  Life,  and  so  is  God 
Himself  in  us.  God  will  not  be  in  us,  or  in  the  Church, 
or  in  the  world,  any  more  or  otherwise  than  as  we  or 
the  world  will  be  in  Him.  Because  the  whole  reason 
and  meaning  and  aim  is  not  so  much  that  He  shall 
come  to  Himself  in  us,  as  that  He  shall  do  so  through 
our  coming  to  ourselves  —  and  so  bringing  Him  to 
Himself  —  in  us.  Creation,  evolution,  Incarnation,  civ- 
ilization, human  progress,  human  destiny  —  are  all  our 
work  as  well  as  God's.  It  is  only  as  they  are  ours,  that 
we  are  we:  the  potentiality,  and  responsibility,  and 
necessity  of  ourselves  becoming  and  being  ourselves 
and  making  our  world,  is  all  that  develops  us  into  and 


The  Beginning  23 

makes  us  persons.  We  could  not  become  ourselves  if 
God  were  not  in  us,  and  did  not  determine  us  in  accord- 
ance with  His  will  and  purpose;  but  if  we  too  did  not, 
by  our  own  act  and  activity,  become  ourselves  —  then 
God  would  not  and  could  not  be  in  us,  for  there  would 
be  no  "we"  or  ourselves  in  which  He  could  be. 


Ill 

THE   ORIGIN  AND   EVOLUTION   OF  LIFE 

WHERE  in  the  process  of  creation  does  life  begin? 
What  is  the  continuity  and  connection  between  its 
lowest  and  its  highest  forms  or  manifestations,  between 
life  in  vegetable  or  animal  and  life  in  man,  between 
life  in  man  and  life  in  God?  If  we  are  to  trace  the 
course  of  life  in  the  world,  must  we  not  begin  even 
further  back  than  its  animal  and  vegetable  forms? 
Creation  or  evolution,  we  are  told,  is  ab  initio  not  a 
mechanism  but  an  organism:  it  was  not  manufactured 
like  a  watch  but  grew  as  a  flower.  And  the  organic  is 
living,  organism  is  the  product  and  expression  of  life. 
What  else  than  life  can  differentiate  its  unity  into  the 
wonderful  diversity  of  organs  and  functions,  and  then 
integrate  that  diversity  into  a  yet  more  wonderful  unity 
again?  To  say  that  our  universe  is  an  organism,  that 
it  was  not  made  but  grew,  is  in  itself  to  say  that  it  was 
the  product  and  not  the  cause  of  life:  life  is  logically, 
and  causatively  prior  to  its  organs  and  functions. 

It  must  be  said  of  the  life  as  was  said  of  the  reason  of 
the  world,  that  it  was  in  the  beginning,  and  that  it  was 
the  beginning.  It  was  the  apxn  causally  if  not  tempo- 
rally, the  principle  of  all  becoming  and  being,  of  all  birth 
and  growth  in  the  universe.  "In  the  Logos  was  life" 


The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life       25 
/ 

—  "was,"  not  became,  eternally  not  temporally:  life 
belongs  to  the  category  of  that  which  was  —  prior  to 
all  phenomenal  appearing  or  becoming.  And  as  the 
Logos,  so  the  Life,  as  St.  John  also  tells  us  elsewhere, 
"was  with  God,"  and  was  God. 

It  is  no  more  to  say  that  all  life  is  God  than  to  say 
that  all  reason  is  God.  Life  in  the  world  does  indeed 
begin  very  low  in  the  scale;  but  so  does  reason;  all 
evolutional  beginnings  are  the  barest  potencies  and 
promises  of  what  are  to  be;  they  wait  upon  their  ends 
to  determine  and  reveal  what  they  are.  If  life  in  the 
world  is  one  from  beginning  to  end,  and  continuous 
through  all  its  stages  of  growth  and  change,  then  it 
must  be  characterized  and  defined  by  what  it  ultimately 
becomes,  not  by  what  it  was  in  the  beginning  or  in  the 
course  of  its  becoming.  At  every  human  birth  we  say 
that  "a  man  is  born  into  the  world;"  but  the  thing  born 
is  a  man  only  potentially  —  and  very  far  from  actually, 
if  reason  and  freedom  and  character  are  what  constitute 
a  man.  Moreover,  life  like  reason  in  the  world  is  liable 
to  perversion  from  the  proper  line  of  its  evolution. 
The  possibility  of  this,  of  deterioration  and  degradation 
as  well  as  of  normal  growth  and  advance,  of  sin  and 
death  instead  of  holiness  and  righteousness  and  life,  is 
the  condition,  the  sine  qua  non,  of  that  relative  indepen- 
dence, that  both  formal  and  ultimately  real  freedom 
through  which  and  in  which  divine  reason  and  life  come 
to  themselves  in  the  world.  To  say  that  reason  as  such, 
and  life  as  such,  are  God,  is  very  far  from  saying  that 
all  the  failures  and  perversions  and  contradictions  of 


26  The  Reason  of  Life 

these,  which  the  fact  of  creature  freedom  renders  possi- 
ble, are  God  also. 

The  point  is  that,  whatever  the  obscurity  of  its  origin, 
the  lowliness  of  its  birth,  the  humiliations  of  its  infancy 
and  growth,  the  perversions,  contradictions,  and  deg- 
radations it  has  undergone,  as  a  matter  of  fact  life  in 
this  world  has  attained  the  high  dignity  of  manhood, 
and  looks  forward  with  assurance  to  the  higher  and 
highest  attainment  and  inheritance  of  Godhead.  And 
that  which  it  is  to  become  thus  in  the  end,  it  was  in 
principle  and  in  essence  in  the  beginning.  What  if  in 
its  inception,  or  conception  in  the  womb  from  which  it 
is  to  be  born,  the  germ  of  man  is  indistinguishable  from 
that  of  vegetable  or  brute  —  if  in  the  end  it  is  to  become 
a  man !  Having  his  entire  earthly  career  in  view,  we 
characterize  and  call  him  from  the  beginning  by  his 
highest  that  is  to  be;  and  in  a  world  of  universal  be- 
coming we  see  nothing  strange  in  the  process  by  which 
he  so  gradually  and  painfully  attains  to  himself.  It 
has  been  with  life  in  the  race  as  it  is  in  the  individual: 
if  there  too  it  has  passed,  in  the  eons,  through  stages 
no  higher  than  vegetable  or  animal,  what  of  it  —  if  in 
the  end  it  has  become  human,  and  is  to  become  divine! 
The  point,  I  repeat,  is  that  the  life  which  in  the  end 
comes  to  itself  in  God,  in  the  beginning  came  from 
Itself  in  God. 

Life  in  its  highest  earthly  form,  as  finite  spirit,  or 
human  personality,  is  that  to  which  God  has  given 
birth  from  Himself,  and  given  to  have  life  in  itself.  If 
its  severance  and  relative  independence,  its  conscious- 


The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life       27 

ness  and  possession  of  itself,  its  freedom  and  selfhood, 
have  not  been  instantaneous  creations,  but  very  gradual 
evolutions,  we  may  begin  to  see  how  and  why  it  could 
not  have  been  otherwise.  Finite  personality  is  the  end 
and  goal  of  all  creation:  all  evolution  is  and  acts  for 
the  sake  and  to  the  end  of  it,  and  may  be  characterized 
as  simply  the  successive  stages  and  final  production  of 
it.  Only  in  and  through  a  process  of  self-being  and 
self-acting,  rising  at  last  into  self-consciousness  and 
self-determination,  could  personality  come  into  exist- 
ence, or  be  at  all.  The  transition  from  the  immanent 
and  physical  so-called  self -origination  of  the  forces, 
laws,  and  operations  of  nature,  through  the  gathering 
reason  and  meaning  of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  up  to 
self-consciousness  and  freedom  in  man,  we  can  never 
more  than  merely  trace  and  chronicle.  Description  is 
not  explanation,  and  the  more  scientific  observation 
and  description  resolve  the  process  of  cosmic  life  into 
a  continuous  evolution  from  an  unknown  and  unknow- 
able beginning  —  that  is,  exclude  from  their  province 
the  question  of  a.pxn>  °f  initial  or  causative  principle 
and  origin  —  the  more  are  we  not  only  entitled,  but 
compelled,  to  fall  back  upon  the  truth  that  life,  like 
reason,  is  not  merely  the  end  and  product  of  the  cosmic 
process  we  call  evolution,  but  was  also  its  antecedent 
principle,  its  formal  and  formative  cause,  its  substance 
and  subject.  All  reason  is  but  the  reason  of  Life :  that 
is  the  only  reason,  the  sole  meaning  and  purpose,  of  all 
that  is.  The  Incarnate  Word  is  the  Word  of  Life. 
Eternal,  Encosmic  Reason  has  spoken,  has  manifested 


28  TJw  Reason  of  Life 

or  expressed  itself  to  us  from  the  beginning  —  that 
we  might  see  and  know  and  have  Life.  All  evolu- 
tion is  the  coming  of  Life:  it  is  the  divine  process 
by  which  the  Transcendent  becomes  immanent  — 
the  Eternal  in  the  temporal,  the  Infinite  in  the 
finite,  the  Perfect  in  the  imperfect,  God  in  the 
world. 

God  immanent  or  encosmic  is  but  the  antecedent, 
the  earlier  stage  of  God  Incarnate.  The  distinction 
between  them  is  simply  that  between  God  in  things 
and  God  in  persons  —  God  in  things  through  laws 
made  automatic,  and  God  in  persons  through  laws,  not 
automatic,  but  subject  in  part,  and  in  highest  part,  to 
the  self-conscious  and  free  wills  of  the  persons.  God 
in  things  is,  so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  purely  imma- 
nent: He  is  simply  the  principle  and  law  of  their  being 
and  action.  A  merely  immanent  God  is  indistinguish- 
able from  the  bare  facts  of  experience  and  the  law  of 
evolution.  God  in  persons  is  immanent  also;  but  He 
is  also  transcendent.  Through  the  twin  miracles  of 
consciousness  and  freedom  —  which  are  facts,  whatever 
their  inexplicability  or  natural  impossibility  —  God  is 
to  us  not  only  within  but  without.  His  being  is  without 
us,  an  objective  fact  to  us;  His  laws  are  without  us,  to 
be  known  or  not,  to  be  reverenced  or  not,  to  be  obeyed 
or  not.  We  ourselves  are  not  only  within  but  without 
us,  as  end  and  purpose  to  us,  to  be  realized  and  fulfilled 
or  not,  to  be  made  or  marred  by  our  own  acts.  Reason 
is  without  us,  to  be  followed  and  conformed  to,  or  to 
be  disregarded,  denied,  and  darkened;  Life  itself  is  an 


The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life       29 

end  without  us,  to  be  sought  and  won,  or  else  to  be 
despoiled  and  lost. 

God  Incarnate  is  the  divine  Logos,  the  eternal  Reason 
and  Life,  which  in  creation  God  would  share  with  the 
manifold  not-Himself  which  He  has  inscrutably  dif- 
ferentiated and  separated  from  Himself,  endows  with 
selfhood  of  its  own,  and  gives  to  have  these  gifts,  of 
reason  and  life,  in  itself.  At  the  same  time,  the  reason 
and  life  which  God  imparts,  by  whatever  process  of 
creature  participation,  never  ceases  to  be  His  own  and 
Himself:  they  are  always  God,  though  God  is  always 
more  than  they  —  transcendent  as  well  as  immanent 
and  incarnate.  The  outward  expression  of  our  reason 
or  extension  of  our  life,  as  we  have  seen,  may  be  de- 
tached from  and  cease  to  be  ourselves;  but  wherever 
God's  Mind  or  Life  is,  no  matter  how  inchoately,  it  is 
not  there  without  Himself;  He  is  with  and  in  it,  and 
it  is  He.  As  immanent  in  His  world,  as  ideal  principle, 
beginning  and  end,  first  and  final  cause,  rational  process 
and  evolving  life  of  the  world,  God  to  us  seems  all  too 
slowly  and  painfully  and  ineffectually  to  find  Himself, 
to  "  come  to  "  or  "  become  "  Himself,  in  the  world.  But 
let  us  remember  that  God  is  not  in  the  world  to  find 
Himself,  but  to  find  Himself  in  the  world  —  and  in  us, 
through  whom  alone  the  world  is  to  find  itself  through 
finding  Him  in  it.  And  the  length  and  inefficiency  of 
the  process  —  as  indeed  the  process  itself  —  is  not  in 
Him  but  in  us.  God  cannot  become  Himself-in-us  in 
a  moment,  only  because  we  are  so  infinitely  incapable 
of  becoming  ourselves-in-Him,  of  being  what  He  is,  in 


30  The  Reason  of  Life 

a  moment.  The  process  from  creature  unreason  and 
non-life  to  divine  reason  and  life  is  one  for  which  all  the 
eons  are  not  too  long.  And  there  is  nothing  in  the 
constitution,  conditions,  or  operation  of  all  the  inter- 
vening eons,  that  is  not  fitted  and  needful  to  bring  the 
creature  infinitesimal  of  immanent  reason  and  life  up 
to  the  fulness  of  participation  in  the  divine  infinitude. 
In  coming  back  again  to  St.  John's  few  words,  so 
full  of  endless  suggestion  and  implication,  let  me  say 
that  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  interpreting  them  literally. 
I  give  not  the  exegesis  but  the  epexegesis,  not  just  what 
the  Apostle  says  or  wishes  to  say  or  even  means  by 
what  he  says,  but  what  I  believe  to  be  the  postulates 
or  presuppositions  of  what  he  says.  When  he  says, 
"In  Him  (the  Logos)  was  life,"  the  principal  truth  I 
find  in  the  words,  or  underlying  the  words,  is  this: 
Life  did  not  originate  as  one  of  the  changes,  accidents, 
or  effects  in  evolution,  but  existed  before  and  was  the 
subject  of  evolution.  The  Apostle,  no  doubt,  was  un- 
conscious or  ignorant  of  any  law  of  the  eonic  grada- 
tions of  life,  and  certainly  has  not  these  in  his  mind. 
He  no  sooner  mentions  the  general  fact  of  life,  as  inher- 
ent in  the  Logos,  as  the  subject  matter  and  principle 
of  creation,  as  the  heart  and  soul  of  God's  self -communi- 
cation in  the  universe,  than  he  passes  instantly  to  its 
highest  manifestation  in  the  life  of  man.  All  before 
is  only  the  coming  or  becoming  of  that  self-knowing, 
self -determining,  personal  reason  and  freedom  —  until 
which  life  is  not  yet  life  indeed,  and  in  which  it  comes 
to  itself  in  the  birth  of  the  finite  spirit,  or  self,  or  person. 


The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life       31 

Only  in  self-conscious  reason  is  there  that  life-in-itself 
to  which  alone  God  objectifies  Himself,  into  which  He 
may  be  born  from  without  and  from  above,  and  which 
so  can  become,  through  itself,  child  and  image  of  God. 

To  know  ourselves  and  in  ourselves  to  know  life :  to 
have  a  life  of  our  own  wherein  we  may  know  what  life 
is,  and  so  may  know  all  life  and  God  Himself,  who  alone 
is  Life  —  this  is  what  is  expressed  in  the  words,  "and 
the  life  was  the  light  of  men."  It  is  only  the  eye  of 
reason,  the  eye  of  man,  that  can  see  that  light:  only 
to  him  can  the  injunction  come,  "  Know  thyself,  and  in 
knowing  thyself  know  God."  For  what  is  God  but  the 
Infinite  and  Eternal  of  ourselves,  and  what  are  our- 
selves, our  true  and  real  selves,  but  the  finite  image  and 
expression  of  God?  We  cannot  too  often  or  too  pro- 
foundly utter  the  prayer,  "Noverim  te,  Domine,  nav- 
erim  me:  noverim  me,  noverim  te!" 

What  is  human  reason  but  the  faculty  or  power  of 
vision,  the  eye  to  see  the  things  that  are  real  but  are 
invisible  to  the  eye  of  sense?  Reason  in  man  is  that 
by  which  he  apprehends,  and  more  and  more  compre- 
hends, the  reason  that  is  in  things  —  above  all,  in  the 
highest  of  things,  himself.  "Right  reason"  is  that  to 
which  things  are  what  they  are,  to  which  nothing 
"  seems  "  other  than  it  is.  Right  reason  is  to  know  God 
as  the  eternal  reason,  meaning,  and  purpose  of  all  things, 
as  of  ourselves:  and  so  to  know  God  is  for  us  eternal 
life.  It  is  in  itself  eternal  life  in  us,  because  it  is  the 
eternal  of  ourselves,  eternal  true  and  real,  eternal  right, 
eternal  good. 


32  The  Reason  of  Life 

"The  life  was  the  light  of  men:"  and  it  is  "a  light 
that  lighteth  every  man."  The  light  that  is  the  light 
of  all  men,  potentially  lighteth  every  man — but  only 
potentially,  not  actually,  for  not  every  man  is  lightened. 
Just  as  the  sun  is  a  light  for  all,  but  not  all  see  the  sun; 
—  just  as,  and  yet  with  a  great  difference;  for  the  vision 
of  sense  is  mechanical  and  involuntary,  while  that  of 
reason,  and  especially  that  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
reason,  is  free  and  depends  in  the  most  essential  respect 
upon  ourselves. 

We  say  that  man  —  which  means  all  men  —  is  a 
rational  being:  it  is  given  to  him  alone  in  our  world  of 
experience  to  see  light,  to  know  life:  and  in  fact  the 
knowledge  of  life  is  the  one  object,  in  many  forms,  and 
from  every  possible  point  of  view,  of  human  observation, 
investigation,  and  speculation.  The  natural  scientist, 
the  physiologist  and  psychologist,  the  social  philosopher, 
the  moralist,  the  legislator  and  statesman,  the  histo- 
rian, the  poet,  the  prophet,  and  the  priest,  are  all,  in 
their  several  parts  and  places,  investigators,  students, 
interpreters  of  life.  And  for  all  that,  "the  light 
shineth  in  darkness,  and  the  darkness  comprehended 
it  not." 

Just  why  and  what  the  darkness  —  is  too  deep  a  sea 
of  speculation  to  embark  upon  here.  The  fact  of  the 
darkness,  at  every  stage  and  in  every  aspect  of  the 
subject  of  life,  life  natural,  moral,  spiritual;  darkness 
in  the  manifold  forms  of  ignorance,  error,  sin,  sorrow, 
death  —  is  too  universal  and  patent  to  need  either 
proof  or  description. 


The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life       33 

It  was  never  the  patient  explorer  or  investigator, 
the  laborious  and  learned  historian,  the  speculative 
philosopher,  the  practical  legislator,  or  the  wise  moralist 
—  all-important  as  their  several  services  are  —  who, 
as  such,  was  the  one  to  see  the  light  eye  to  eye,  to  meet 
and  know  the  life  face  to  face,  and  to  bear  personal 
witness  to  it  in  all  the  world.  It  has  ever  been  the 
prophet  —  Moses  returned  from  his  long  exile,  or  come 
down  from  the  mountain  top  in  Arabia,  Elijah  in  the 
desert,  or  John  the  Baptist  crying  in  the  wilderness  of 
Judea.  "  There  came  a  man  from  God,  whose  name  was 
John.  The  same  came  for  witness,  that  he  might  bear 
witness  of  the  light,  that  all  men  through  him  might 
believe."  What  is  it  in  us  that  apprehends  the  light, 
that  sees  and  knows  the  life:  that  enables  us  to  say 
with  Jesus,  "  I  speak  that  I  do  know,  and  testify  that 
which  I  have  seen?"  John  the  Baptist  was  the  chosen 
and  typical  witness  of  light  and  life,  because  he  was 
the  representative  of  that  which  is  the  precondition  of 
these,  that  which  is  the  sole  efficacious  preparation  and 
qualification  of  them  —  the  repentance  that  has  known 
darkness  and  death,  the  faith  that  out  of  these  sees  and 
lays  hold  upon  light  and  life.  The  repentance  and 
faith  which  John  practised  and  preached,  and  which  was 
embodied  in  his  baptism,  contained  in  germ  all  the 
truth  that  was  to  be  realized  in  its  fulness  in  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  was  no  premature 
and  impossible  anticipation  which  enabled  him  even 
then  to  see  in  Jesus,  the  baptized  and  Baptizer  with 
the  Holy  Ghost,  "the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  away 
4 


34  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  sin  of  the  world."  But  our  interest  as  yet  is 
with  the  redeeming  Person  rather  than  with  the 
redemptive  Work  of  Jesus. 

"He  (John)  was  not  the  light,  but  came  that  he  might 
bear  witness  of  the  light.  There  was  the  true  light, 
even  the  light  that  lighteth  every  man,  coming  into 
the  world."  We  come  thus  upon  a  distinction  which 
runs  through  the  entire  mind  of  the  New  Testament, 
in  various  modes  of  expression  and  illustration.  It 
appears  here  as  the  distinction  between  the  light  that 
lightens,  and  the  light  that  is  lightened,  the  life  that 
quickens  and  the  life  quickened.  There  is  mystery 
and  apparent  paradox  in  the  fact  that  the  distinction 
—  and  also  the  reconciliation  and  identification  —  of 
these  two  aspects  runs  through  the  person  and  work  of 
Jesus  Christ  Himself.  Unquestionably  Jesus  Christ 
appears  as  the  baptized  as  well  as  the  Baptizer  with 
the  Holy  Ghost,  the  anointed  as  well  as  Anointer  from 
above.  He  was  in  the  passive  and  human  sense,  as 
well  as  in  the  divine  and  active  sense,  the  regeneration 
and  sanctification  of  humanity  —  the  birth  and  life  of 
man  in  God.  He  was  indeed  humanity  in  God,  and 
recapitulated  in  His  human  life  the  whole  true  experi- 
ence, history,  and  destiny  of  man  in  his  at-one-ment 
and  oneness  with  God.  But  the  distinctive  thing  in 
Him  is,  that  He  was  man  in  God,  or  humanity  in  God, 
because  He  was  first  God  in  humanity. 

The  difference  between  the  Light  that  lighteth  and 
the  light  that  is  lighted,  the  light  in  Itself,  or  in  God, 
and  the  light  in  us,  is  never  lost  sight  of.  John  the 


The  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life       35 

Baptist  was  a  burning  and  a  shining  "lamp";  he  was 
not  the  Light  Itself,  of  which  the  lamp  is  but  the  recipi- 
ent and  vehicle.  In  Jesus  Christ  the  true  light,  the 
Light  Itself,  was  coming  into  the  world.  This  side  of 
divine  originality  and  underivedness  —  at  least  in  rela- 
tion with  creation  and  humanity  —  is  consistently 
preserved  in  all  representations  of  our  Lord.  He  is 
"The  Full,"  of  whose  "fulness"  we  all  receive:  we  are 
His  pleroma,  "  the  fulness  of  Him  who  filleth  all  in 
all."  He  is  full  of  truth  and  grace;  none  other  is  "  full," 
but  at  the  most  only  "filled."  If  Jesus  Christ  was 
The  Word  —  although  He  was  so  in  both  senses,  yet 
primarily  and  essentially  He  was  Word  Speaking,  not 
word  spoken,  the  divine  expressing,  and  not  mere 
expression,  of  humanity.  He  was  in  the  world  before 
He  came  into  it:  He  who  was  its  beginning,  not  only 
temporal  or  initial,  but  causal  and  principial,  was  in 
the  world,  immanent  in  it  from  its  beginning;  but 
"the  world  knew  Him  not." 

Whatever  of  human  origin,  human  nature  and  con- 
sequent limitation,  human  experience,  human  truth 
and  meaning,  human  identity  with  ourselves,  Jesus 
Christ  may  have  had,  and  most  certainly  did  have, 
Christianity  can  never  surrender  or  let  go  its  hold  upon 
the  conviction,  its  knowledge,  that  in  the  very  fullest, 
completest,  and  most  final  sense,  He  was  and  is  "God 
manifest  in  the  flesh." 


IV 
LIFE  ENCOSMIC  AND  INCARNATE 

I  HAVE  spoken  of  all  life  as  one  —  one  from  lowest  to 
highest,  if  we  are  tracing  its  process  in  natural  evolu- 
tion; from  highest  to  lowest,  if  we  are  considering  its 
ante-mundane  or  supernatural  source  and  essential 
nature.  I  have  ventured  to  describe  its  phenomenal 
appearance  or  creature-form  in  terms  of  evolution, 
because  that  is  the  current  science,  and  because  the 
general  fact  or  truth  of  evolution  —  with  which  alone, 
apart  from  its  methods  or  laws  in  detail,  I  presume  to 
deal  —  can  scarcely  now  be  questioned.  It  may  be  well 
in  passing  to  say,  for  popular  apprehension,  that  the 
evolution  of  the  highest  earthly  life  from  the  lowest, 
and  through  progressive  forms  or  stages  of  itself,  does 
not  involve  its  evolution  from  or  out  of  other  forms 
than  its  own.  The  straight  upward  trunk  and  summit 
of  the  tree  has  not  passed  through  or  come  out  of  any 
of  the  lower  branches;  so  the  life  that  has  at  last 
culminated  in  rational,  free,  and  ultimately  divine 
humanity,  has  not  come  through  any  of  the  deflections 
or  ramifications  of  life  into  other  or  lower  animals  than 
men.  There  is  manifest  interconnection  and  interre- 
lation running  through  all  life  —  as,  in  the  narrower 
field,  through  all  men:  "we  are  all  of  one  blood,"  which 

36 


Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate  37 

means,  of  one  life.  But  that  no  more  means  the  descent, 
or  ascent,  of  man  from  any  lower  animal,  or  any  other 
than  the  lower  states  and  stages  of  himself,  than  it 
means  the  descent  of  the  Caucasian  from  or  through 
or  out  of  the  African. 

Life  begins,  evolutionally,  to  come  to  itself  with  the 
coming  of  the  "self,"  or  the  birth  of  reason,  whose 
first  function  is  self -consciousness.  That  may  be  called 
the  "apprehending  (KaraXa/Jav)  of  the  light";  life  con- 
ceiving itself,  conscious  of  itself,  is  light;  "know  thy- 
self," is  the  law  and  duty  of  reason:  "Know  thyself, 
take  possession  of  thyself,  determine,  become,  be  thy- 
self," at  once  expresses  and  enjoins  the  process  by 
which  selfhood  comes  into  being,  by  which  the  life 
becomes  the  light  of  men,  and  man,  with  the  life  of  God 
so  born  into  conscious,  free,  personal  oneness  and  fel- 
lowship with  him,  becomes  Son  and  Image  of  God,  and 
heir  of  Eternity. 

But  neither  reason  nor,  consequently,  life  is  born  like 
Pallas,  full-formed  and  full-armed  —  whether  in  the 
individual  or  in  the  race.  It  is  long  true,  and  still  true, 
that  "the  light  that  lighteth  every  man"  "shineth  in 
the  darkness."  Potential  light  is  still  very  far  off  from 
its  fulfilment  in  actual  light.  That  God  has  endowed  us 
by  nature  with  the  faculty  and  capacity  for  light;  that 
He  Himself  in  the  world  as  its  life  is,  as  such,  its  light; 
—  does  not  dispense  us  from  the  necessity  of  coming  to 
the  light  by  an  act  and  process  of  our  own.  He  gives 
us  light  and  life  only  through  our  own  seeing  the  light 
and  living  the  life.  All  rational,  moral,  spiritual  crea- 


38  The  Reason  of  Life 

tion  is  creation  through  and  by  ourselves;  God  does 
nothing  in  a  Self  that  is  not  also  the  doing  of  the  self. 
That  is  the  condition  and  law  of  personality;  anything 
done  merely  upon  us,  that  is  not  also  our  own  doing, 
that  is  instead  of  our  own  doing,  or  that  saves  or  spares 
us  the  doing,  is  at  the  cost  or  expense  of  us;  it  dis- 
places and  annuls  the  personality  which  is  the  one 
object  and  aim.  So  the  light  shineth  in  the  darkness, 
and  will  continue  to  do  so  until  we  will,  and  can,  and 
do  see  it  for  ourselves;  until  our  own  spiritual  faculties 
and  organs  are  fashioned  by  use,  and  our  perceptions 
are  exercised  to  apprehend  and  discern  it.  I  repeat 
that  all  through  that  self-becoming  of  things  which  we 
call  evolution,  we  can  trace  the  law  which  only  in  the 
highest  things,  ourselves,  manifests  its  reason  and 
justifies  or  explains  itself:  Life  is  only  for  that  which 
fits  itself  to  and  for  life. 

"The  light  that  lighteth  every  man  was  (Itself) 
coming  into  the  world."  It  might  be  assumed,  if  we 
go  no  further  than  what  has  been  said,  that  this  "com- 
ing into  the  world  "  could  and  would  be  only  an  imma- 
nent one:  that  the  coming  of  the  light  would  be  only 
through  the  evolution  of  our  own  faculty  of  vision  and 
power  of  apprehension.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
is  a  question  which  we  have  first  to  consider  and  ponder 
before  accepting  that  conclusion.  It  is  the  function 
and  task  of  reason  to  apprehend,  and  so  far  andjast  as 
possible  to  comprehend,  our  true  ends  and  ultimate 
destiny.  Is  it  to  be  claimed  or  demanded  of  reason, 
either  that  it  shall  have  created,  or  that  it  shall  deter- 


Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate  39 

mine  and  accomplish  those  ends?  Can  reason  do  more 
of  itself  than  simply  understand  and  interpret?  And 
can  it,  of  itself,  understand  or  interpret  anything  unto 
completion  or  perfection?  Reason  does  not  either  cre- 
ate or  determine  its  objects;  it  only  apprehends  them, 
and,  in  the  endless  act  and  process  of  its  own  develop- 
ment, more  and  more  comprehends  them. 

Reason  in  man,  as  I  have  said,  is  only  the  faculty 
and  function  of  perceiving  the  prior  reason  that  is 
already  in  things  and,  above  all  in  this  world,  in  him- 
self —  that  prior  reason  which  the  Scriptures  call  the 
divine  "foreknowledge  and  predestination,"  which  in 
fact  is  the  Logos  or  Reason  of  God.  The  perfection 
of  reason  in  us  is,  "to  know  ourselves  even  as  also  we 
are  known"  of  God.  But  we  cannot,  from  or  of  our- 
selves, by  any  immanent  process  alone,  know  ourselves 
as  God  knows  us;  such  knowledge  we  may  receive,  but 
cannot  produce  or  originate.  "We  know  not  (of 
ourselves)  what  we  shall  be"  —  and  yet  surely  need 
to  know  it,  if  we  are  not  merely  to  be  it,  but  to  be  it 
ourselves,  of  our  own  intelligence,  choice,  free  will,  and 
personal  act  and  activity.  There  can  be  no  self-being, 
or  personal  existence,  at  all  without  an  objective,  far 
off,  future  end  or  goal  of  being  —  by  foreknowledge, 
desire,  will,  purpose  and  pursuit,  and  gradual  attain- 
ment of  which,  we  are  to  become,  find,  or  make 
ourselves. 

This  is  yet  more,  and  infinitely  more  the  case,  when 
the  "  all-we-are-to-be  "  is  distinctly  not  in  ourselves,  but 
is  to  come  only  by  union  with  an  Eternal  and  Infinite, 


40  The  Reason  of  Life 

before,  beyond,  and  without  ourselves.  How  can  any 
immanent  unfolding  of  our  mere  selves  attain  any  such 
transcendent  end  ?  There  is  a  real  and  divine  truth  in 
the  principle  and  fact  of  immanence,  but  it  is  only  half, 
and  the  lower  half  of  the  truth.  All  spiritual  and 
actual  life  of  men,  all  personal  knowledge  of  and  par- 
ticipation in  the  Life  Itself,  begins  with  transition 
from  mere  immanence  into  transcendence.  It  is  not 
until  we  know  God,  and  the  world,  and  our  own  life, 
as  objective  and  as  objects  to  ourselves,  it  is  not  until 
we  have  entered  into  the  conscious  and  free  relation 
of  distinct  and  independent  persons  with  all  these,  that 
religion  exists.  The  bond  that  constitutes  it  is  not 
the  immanent,  physical,  natural  one  of  the  universal 
and  necessary  inherence,  connection,  and  dependence 
of  all  things  upon  God,  but  the  rational,  moral,  and 
spiritual  one  of  mutual  knowledge  and  understanding, 
mutual  love  and  agreement,  mutual  good  will  and 
consentient  action  between  persons,  between  men  and 
God.  What  I  have  called  the  encosmic  relation  of 
God  to  the  world  is  properly  described  as  immanent, 
and  is  subject  to  the  universal  and  admitted  laws  of 
immanence,  uniformity,  necessity,  and  whatever  else. 
But  the  incarnate  relation  of  God  to  men  is  distinctively 
a  transcendent  one,  a  relation  of  either  to  the  other 
from  without.  The  former  or  encosmic  relation  under- 
lies our  natural  constitution  and  faculties,  our  congeni- 
tal affinity  or  congruity  with  God,  our  potentiality  of 
the  divine  in  ourselves.  The  relation  of  incarnation 
is  one  of  spirits  —  based  indeed  and  conditioned  upon 


Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate          41 

that  of  natures,  but  in  itself  that  of  persons.  The  bond 
is  one  of  mutual  knowledge,  love,  will,  action,  and 
life. 

Without  venturing  further  into  such  depths,  it  is 
enough  for  our  present  purpose  to  recall  the  fact  that, 
from  the  beginning,  the  Christian  consciousness  has 
recognized  in  Jesus  Christ,  not  so  much  a  human  testi- 
mony (though  this  also)  to  light  and  life,  as  rather  a 
divine  manifestation  of  the  light  itself  and  the  life 
itself,  the  Light  and  the  Life  of  God.  In  His  person 
it  was  given  to  the  world,  not  merely  to  apprehend  the 
light  —  to  know  objectively  in  Him  the  reason  and 
cause  and  end  of  itself  —  but  to  receive  and  share  the 
life,  which  is  God  Himself  in  us.  And  to  the  sin  against 
light,  its  denial,  was  added  the  yet  greater  sin  against 
life,  in  its  rejection.  Non-apprehension  of  the  truth  is 
non-acceptance  of  the  life ;  sin  of  the  mind  and  of  the 
will  go  closely  together. 

"But  to  as  many  as  (through  right  vision  and  good 
will)  received  Him,  to  them  gave  He  right  and  title  and 
power  to  become  sons  of  God,  even  to  those  who  be- 
lieve on  His  name :  who  were  begotten  not  of  blood, 
nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but 
of  God."  Before  approaching  the  question  of  our 
Lord's  communication  or  impartation  of  the  grace  and 
life  of  divine  sonship  to  others  than  Himself,  even  to 
all  who  believe  on  His  name,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
dwell  a  little  first  upon  the  fact  of  human  sonship  as 
realized  in  Himself.  When  it  is  said  (Eph.  i.  5)  that 
"God  foreordained,  or  predestinated,  us  unto  the 


42  The  Reason  of  Life 

adoption  as  sons  unto  Himself  through  Jesus  Christ," 
it  means  that  the  life  which  came  to  us  from  God  as 
our  father  is  ultimately  to  return  to  Him  in  our  own 
realized  and  accomplished  sonship.  The  principle  and 
subject  of  evolution  as  we  know  it  is  Life ;  the  culmi- 
nation of  earthly  life  is  in  man ;  the  natural  end  and 
destination  of  man  is  in  Christ,  in  whom  we  actualize 
or  bring  to  effect  our  destiny,  from  the  beginning,  of 
children  of  God  and  partakers  personally  in  the  per- 
sonal life  of  God. 

The  Life  that  was  Jesus  Christ  Himself,  as  the  culmi- 
nation of  human  destiny  in  general,  had  thus  an  imma- 
nent and  evolutional,  cosmic  and  human,  derivation. 
Jesus  Christ  was  of  the  seed  of  David,  of  Abraham,  of 
Adam :  He  came  in  the  fulness  of  time,  the  heir  of  its 
spiritual  as  well  as  natural  accumulation  and  trans- 
mission. What  we  claim  for  Him  is,  that  He  was  and 
is  the  true,  divine  as  well  as  human,  Exponent  of  the 
right  reason,  Realizer  of  the  accomplished  freedom, 
First-begotten  of  the  risen  life  of  the  world.  Irenseus 
well  enough  expressed  the  truth  when  he  said  of  our 
Lord,  longam  expositionem  hominis  in  se  recapitulat: 
the  destiny  of  man,  from  its  conception  in  the  mind  or 
reason  of  God  to  its  final  fulfilment  in  the  life  of  God, 
is  contained  and  revealed  in  the  story  of  Jesus  Christ. 
That  story  begins  not  in  time  but  in  eternity,  not  in 
Adam  but  in  God.  But  it  is  the  story  none  the  less  of 
Adam  also,  of  humanity  from  beginning  to  end  of  its 
true  evolution.  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Way  of  Man,  from 
Adam  up  to  God :  as  much  the  natural  as  the  super- 


Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate  43 

natural  way,  the  proper  end  of  nature  as  the  predes- 
tined end  of  God. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  therefore  to  construe  the 
human  sonship  of  Jesus  in  human  terms.  The  prior, 
prehuman  Sonship  of  Himself  alone  is  the  presupposi- 
tion and  precondition  of  the  sonship  realized  in  His 
humanity,  but  it  is  the  human  sonship  alone  of  which 
He  is  for  us  the  author  and  exponent,  the  only  sonship 
which  we  can  receive  from  Him  and  share  with  Him. 
It  is  that  therefore  of  which  He  is  the  Way  to  us,  and 
which  it  more  nearly  and  immediately  concerns  us  to 
learn  from  Him. 

Nevertheless,  Christianity  can  never  see  in  Jesus 
Christ  only  the  human  surmise  and  suggestion,  and 
not  also  the  divine  fulfilment  of  human  life.  He  can 
never  be  to  us  only  the  human  interrogation  and  not 
also  the  divine  reply,  the  full  answer  to  all  we  want  of 
God.  All  our  want  is  summed  up  in  the  single  word 
Life,  and  this  is  the  record  in  reply:  "God  hath  given 
us  life,  and  this  life  is  in  His  Son:  he  that  hath  the  Son 
hath  the  life."  Our  Lord  is  come  for  the  express 
purpose  "that  we  might  have  life."  To  say  then  that 
"the  Christ"  of  our  religious  conception  is  only  a 
human  ideal,  the  personification  of  our  own  idea  or 
sentiment  or  desire  or  hope  of  divine  life,  and  that  the 
historic  Jesus  was  but  the  highest  personal  exemplar 
and  expression  of  that  ideal,  who  has  therefore  given 
His  name  to  it  —  not  only  falls  short  of  the  truth,  but 
directly  reverses  it.  The  idea  embodied  and  expressed 
to  us  in  the  Christ  is  distinctly  the  difference  and  dis- 


44  The  Reason  of  Life 

crimination  between  truth  merely  conceived  and  truth 
realized  and  existent.  It  is  not  a  Christ  in  the  mind 
that  is  our  religion,  but  the  Christ  actual  in  the  flesh. 
The  gist  and  point  of  our  Christianity  is  that  the 
Christ,  all  that  is  contained  in  the  concept  or  that  is 
expressed  in  the  term,  all  of  God  in  man  and  man  in 
God,  all  of  Life  Eternal  for  us  and  in  us  —  "was  mani- 
fest in  the  flesh,"  was  incarnate  in  Jesus.  The  spirit 
that  denied  that  Jesus  Christ  was  "come  in  the  flesh," 
was  to  St.  John  the  spirit  of  Antichrist.  The  "  newness" 
of  old  truths,  old  ideas,  sentiments,  and  conceptions, 
"in  Jesus,"  was  that  in  Him  they  were  "come,"  were 
passed  into  act  and  actuality.  We  believe  that  Jesus 
was  the  end  of  an  evolutional  process  —  but  what  was 
that  end?  It  was  not  only  the  mind  but  the  life  of 
God  in  the  world,  "come  to  Itself"  in  Him.  He  was 
the  End  and  Heir  of  the  world,  inasmuch  as  He  was  its 
reason  revealed,  its  meaning  interpreted,  its  purpose 
accomplished.  But  in  saying  this,  let  us  remember 
that  the  Christ  is  still  only  in  process:  Jesus  is  coming 
still,  and  yet  to  come.  The  Body  of  His  incarnation 
was  not  alone  His  flesh,  but  all  flesh.  Jesus  was  not 
only  Man,  but  all  men. 

The  life,  then,  which  Jesus  Christ  brought  into  our 
humanity,  the  divine  sonship  with  which  He  invested 
it,  was  the  natural  destination,  which  is  one  with  the 
divine  predestination,  of  humanity  itself.  Humanity 
comes  to  its  end  first  in  Him:  He  is  its  Fulfiler  and 
its  Fulfilment:  the  Author  and  Revealer,  not  only  of 
the  fact  that,  but  no  less  of  the  act  or  process  by 


Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate  45 

which,  humanity  is  born  of  God  and  enters  into  the 
life  of  God.  For  divine  sonship  and  life  have  just 
as  much  to  be  the  act  and  attainment  of  humanity 
in  God,  as  they  are  the  gift  and  operation  of  God  in 
humanity. 

"As  many  as  receive"  Jesus  Christ,  through  faith  in 
His  name,  through  apprehension  of  what  He  is  to 
them,  see  themselves  in  Him,  and  Him  in  themselves. 
In  Him  they  "know  themselves  even  as  also  they  are 
known,"  as  God  knows  them;  and  "apprehend  that 
for  which  also  they  are  apprehended  of  God  in  Christ 
Jesus."  In  Him  they  find  "authority,"  right  and 
title,  grace  and  power,  to  "become  sons  of  God."  In 
Him  they  see  themselves  entered  into  their  divine 
inheritance,  as  heirs  and  possessors  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God,  and  as  actual  partakers  of  Eternal  Life.  Why 
and  how  does  our  Incarnate  Lord  constitute  and  confer 
the  right  and  title  by  which  we  become  sons  of  God? 
Because  —  first  in  Himself  for  us,  and  then  by  Himself 
in  us  —  He  is  the  Author  and  the  fulfilment  of  the  con- 
dition upon  which,  and  is  Himself  the  mean  or  means 
through  which  alone  we  can  be  sons  of  God;  and 
moreover  is  then  the  matter  and  substance  of  our 
sonship  rby  His  own  continued  presence  and  life 
in  us. 

The  process  by  which  we  share  the  sonship  and  life 
of  Jesus  Christ,  the  rationale  of  our  own  begetting  and 
birth  and  life  of  God,  is  described  in  the  words,  "which 
were  begotten,  or  born,  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of 
the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God."  Just  as 


46  The  Reason  of  Life 

Jesus  Christ  was  Himself,  in  the  flesh,  no  mere  offspring 
of  man  and  woman,  but  Son  of  God  and  Humanity,  so 
that  holy  thing  that  is  born  in  us  through  Him  is  no 
mere  innate  or  immanent  birth  of,  or  out  of,  ourselves; 
but  is  a  life  begotten  and  born  from  without,  and 
from  above.  As  the  true  and  inevitable  designation 
of  the  higher  nature  of  Christ  in  the  flesh,  or  of  Jesus, 
is  Incarnate  Godhead,  so  His  lower  nature  and  life, 
which  we  share  with  Him,  cannot  be  otherwise  con- 
ceived or  expressed  than  as  Humanity  Regenerate. 
The  life  of  God  in  man  cannot  manifest  itself  otherwise 
than  as  a  new  life  of  man  in  God.  Regeneration  is  the 
fact  and  theme  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  seed,  the  soil,  and  the  fruit  produced;  the 
sperma,  the  womb,  and  the  life  that  is  born  of  it,  are 
constant  figures  of  vital  spiritual  facts  and  events.  In 
the  operations  described  under  these  figures,  the  soil 
or  womb  is  always  upon  earth  —  the  more  or  less  sus- 
ceptible, receptive,  responsive  nature  or  heart  of  man, 
made  for  God,  for  the  addition  to  it,  the  reception  in 
it,  the  union  with  it,  of  life  from  without  and  from 
above.  Always  the  sperma  or  seed  is  "the  Word," 
that  which  eternally  is  with  God  and  is  God,  that  of 
God  which  is  communicable,  which  the  world  may 
share  with  Him,  and  which  constitutes  its  measure  of 
the  divinity  that  informs  and  shapes  all  that  is  not 
God.  The  Word  is  in  all  that  is,  but  is  the  light  of 
man,  to  whom  alone  it  utters  and  would  reveal  Itself. 
The  Word  of  God,  which  is  the  divine  counterpart  and 
object  of  man's  own  innate  reason,  the  truth  and  mean- 


Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate  47 

ing  of  all  things  and  chiefly  of  himself,  to  know  Whom 
is  his  life,  and  to  serve  Whom  his  freedom  —  that 
eternal  Word  needed  not  alone  to  speak  to  us  hi  all 
things,  but  more  especially  to  "come  "  to  us  and  "  man- 
ifest" Himself  among  and  hi  us.  To  know  God  hi 
things,  by  natural  reason  and  by  inference  from  nature 
and  from  ourselves,  furnishes  no  doubt  a  valid  basis 
for  natural  religion.  But  to  know  God  hi  Person, 
that  is  to  say,  hi  Himself  and  all  of  Himself  that  is 
revealable  and  communicable,  hi  that  perfect  Self- 
revelation  of  Him  which  is  most  completely  His  Word 
to  us,  and  that  Self-impartation  of  Him  which  is  His 
Son  hi  us  —  that  is  religion  of  another  sort  and  hi  an 
infinitely  truer  and  more  real  sense. 

As  it  is  always  the  Word,  which  is  the  Seed,  that  is 
revealed  or  communicated,  that  is  conceived  and  born 
in  us  —  so  always  it  is  the  Spirit  by  which  it  is  con- 
ceived and  born  and  lives  hi  us.  The  Word  is  the 
divine  principle  of  objective  communication  to  us; 
the  Spirit  is  the  equally  divine  principle  of  subjective 
appropriation  by  us. 

The  seed  assumes  the  soil;  it  is  correlative  with  it: 
they  are  mutually  related  and  adapted  the  one  to  the 
other,  and  neither  has  function  or  existence,  as  such, 
apart  from  the  other.  That  which  is  to  be  born  of 
them  is  joint  product  of  seed  and  soil.  So  when  our 
Lord  entered  into  our  nature  through  the  womb  of  the 
Virgin,  the  seed  was  of  God,  but  the  soil  or  womb  was 
man.  And  so  He  who  was  born  was  equally  Son  of 
God  and  Son  of  Man;  the  eternal  Mind  and  Life  of 


48  The  Reason  of  Life 

God  in  the  world  comes  to  Himself  through  the  process 
of  nature  and  of  man. 

But  the  Spirit  is  not  merely  the  natural  affinity  of 
the  human  with  the  divine,  man's  constitutional  po- 
tentiality and  need  for  God.  It  is  not  wholly  man's 
instinct  for  God;  rather  is  the  Spirit  of  God  Himself 
attracting  and  drawing  us  to  Him  through  that  natural 
affinity  and  need.  Our  Lord  expresses  the  full  truth 
when  He  says,  "No  man  can  come  to  me,  except  the 
Father  that  sent  me  draw  him."  Just  as  the  Word 
was  in  the  world  before  His  incarnation  in  Jesus  Christ, 
so  the  Spirit  was  in  the  world  before  His  descent  from 
the  risen  and  ascended  Lord  of  Life.  But  the  Spirit 
after  is  as  much  more  than  the  Spirit  before,  as  the 
Word  become  Flesh  in  Jesus  is  more  than  the  Word 
that  from  the  beginning  was  revealed  "through  the 
things  that  are  made!  "  It  is  always  true  that  the 
Spirit  "proceedeth  from  the  Father  and  the  Son" — 
or  from  the  Father  through  the  Son. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  there  is  a  premonition  of 
spirit  even  in  inanimate  things,  in  the  attractions 
of  matter  and  the  affinities  of  substances;  still  more, 
of  course,  in  the  natural  affections  and  domestic  rela- 
tions that  bind  animal  life  together.  But  as  reason  is 
reason  only  when  it  comes  to  know,  and  possess,  and 
determine  itself  as  in  man  —  so  love  is  truly  love,  and 
spirit  is  fully  spirit,  only  hi  personality,  and  in  the 
unity  of  personal  relations.  Spirit  answers  to  Spirit 
only  through  rational  intelligence  and  understanding, 
through  affection  and  love,  through  mutual  will  and 


Life  Encosmic  and  Incarnate          49 

consent,  through  unity  and  harmony  of  action,  conduct, 
character,  life.  Father  and  Son  are  One  only  in  the 
unity  of  Spirit,  and  Spirit  exists  only  in  such  a  unity 
of  Persons.  The  Holy  Ghost  is  the  divine  perfection 
of  Mutual  Knowledge  and  Love. 

As  the  Holy  Ghost  is  the  unity  in  Heaven  of  Father 
and  Son:  is  the  divine  harmony  in  the  universe  between 
God  transcendent  and  God  immanent,  God  in  Himself 
and  God  in  all  else:  —  so  on  earth  is  He  the  bond 
between  God  and  us,  that  bond  revealed,  consummated, 
assured  to  us  in  Jesus  Christ.  We  want  not  the 
human  idea  or  ideal  only  of  that  bond,  but  the  divine 
actual  and  real:  something  that  faith  makes  visible, 
that  hope  makes  present,  and  that  love  begins  already 
to  know,  possess,  and  enjoy. 

Why  is  it  less  rational  to  worship  God  incarnate  in 
a  Person  than  immanent  in  a  thing  we  call  Nature? 
Where  is  He  most,  or  is  He  most  Himself,  and  therefore 
most  worthy  of  our  worship?  He  is  indeed  in  nature 
and  in  all  its  processes — but  assuredly  there  most, 
where  nature  has  come  to  its  consummation  in  Himself, 
and  where  He  stands  revealed  and  manifested  in  Jesus 
Christ.  I  can  doubt,  I  can  at  times  disbelieve,  God 
anywhere,  everywhere,  except  in  Jesus  Christ. 


V 
THE  GLORY  OF  THE  ONLY  BEGOTTEN 

"THE  WORD  became  flesh,  and  dwelt  among  us.  And 
we  beheld  His  glory,  glory  as  of  the  only  begotten  from 
the  Father."  What  was  the  peculiar  glory  of  Jesus 
Christ,  the  significance  of  that  complete  impression 
which  He  has  left  permanently  upon  the  eye  and  mind 
and  life  of  all  who  know  Him,  and  know  themselves 
in  Him?  Within  the  thought  of  the  New  Testament 
there  is  room  for  at  least  three  aspects  or  applications 
of  the  term  "glory"  as  used  in  connection  with  our 
Lord.  There  is  first  the  eternal  and  divine  glory  which 
belongs  to  Him  as  the  Logos  who  in  the  timeless  "  be- 
ginning" was  with  God  and  was  God.  In  the  proper 
and  perfect  sense  of  the  term,  the  Logos  of  God  is  the 
principle  of  all  divine  Self-utterance  or  impartation: 
it  is  that  of  Himself  which  is  in  all  that  proceeds  from 
Him.  The  divine  that  is  in  the  world  and  in  ourselves, 
is  not  in  the  fullest  sense  God;  it  is  what,  speaking  in 
terms  of  ourselves,  we  would  call  God's  Word,  or 
Will  —  which  must  certainly,  to  save  us  from  pan- 
theism or  from  an  objectionable  monism,  be  just  as 
clearly  distinguished  from  God's  Self  as  it  must  no  less 
be  identified  with  Him.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  describes  our  Lord  in  His  eter- 

50 


The  Glory  of  the  Only  Begotten         51 

nity  as  at  once  the  "  Express  "  of  the  Divine  glory,  and 
the  "  Impress  "  of  the  Divine  substance  or  essence.  He 
is  the  Mean  or  Medium  of  God's  expression  and  im- 
pression in  or  upon  all  else  than  Himself.  So  through 
Him  all  things  were  created  and  are  upheld:  He  is  not 
a  Being  distinct  from  God,  although  within  God  His 
being  is  distinguished  from  the  Father  who  is  the  sole 
source  of  all  being. 

The  Logos  of  Creation  as  a  whole  is  specifically  the 
logos  of  each  detail  of  creation,  and  most  manifestly 
so  of  its  higher  and  highest  details.  So,  in  the  second 
place,  as  Logos  of  man,  the  glory  pf  our  Lord  is  that 
of  the  "Man  from  Heaven,"  man  as  from  all  eternity 
in  the  mind  and  purpose  of  God.  In  God  foreknowl- 
edge and  predestination  are  inseparable:  the  end  was 
in  the  beginning:  final  cause  was  first  cause.  Jesus 
Christ  was  Alpha  as  well  as  Omega,  from  and  through 
Whom,  as  well  as  for  and  to  Whom,  all  things  were 
created.  Man  in  Him  was  first,  as  he  is  last  in  creation 
as  we  know  it,  beginning  and  end  of  all  evolution,  heir 
of  all  things  and  predestined  head  of  the  world  that  is 
to  be.  When  the  seer  or  prophet  in  John  the  Baptist 
recognized  in  Jesus  the  Trptoros  /w>u,  he  embodied  in  his 
person  the  witness  of  humanity  to  its  divine  proto- 
type. Jesus  Christ  was  before  David,  before  Moses, 
before  Abraham,  before  Adam,  before  the  foundation 
of  the  earth. 

But  thirdly  and  chiefly,  as  concerns  ourselves,  the 
glory  of  Jesus,  or  of  the  Word  made  Flesh,  was  the 
glory  of  the  deity  realized  by  Him  in  our  humanity, 


52  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  true  divinity  of  His  perfected  manhood.  That 
was  a  glory,  not  brought  down  with  Him  from  heaven 
as  God,  but  wrought  out  by  Him  on  earth  as  man  — 
and  then  taken  up  with  Him  into  heaven.  Of  course 
the  two  cannot  be  severed,  any  more  than  the  stream 
from  its  source:  "No  man  hath  ascended  into  heaven, 
but  he  that  descended  out  of  heaven,  even  the  Son  of 
man,  which  is  in  heaven."  But  the  true  glory  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  as  divine  representative  of  men,  is,  in  this 
connection,  not  so  much  that  which  entered  into  Him 
as  endowment  as  that  which  is  accomplished  by  Him  as 
human  acquirement  and  attainment.  It  was  with 
Him  as  it  is  with  us  —  not  so  much  what  we  have 
received,  as  what  we  have  ourselves  done  with  it  and 
made  out  of  it:  "Herein  is  my  Father  glorified:  that 
ye  bear  much  fruit." 

But  yet  more  definitely,  what  was  the  exact  glory 
which  the  eyes  of  the  two  Johns  beheld  and  bare  witness 
to,  that  we  all  through  them  should  believe?  It  was 
"the  glory  as  of  an  only-begotten  from  a  father."  What 
they  saw  in  Jesus  Christ  was  God  Himself  reproduced 
in  our  humanity  —  man  reborn  and  remade  in  that 
only  possible  personal  and  real  image  of  God,  the  Son 
in  whom  Himself  is  repeated.  Sonship  is  the  only 
proper  utterance  and  expression  of  fatherhood,  and 
the  whole  truth  of  man  created  in  the  image  of  God 
finds  fulfilment  only  in  the  consummation  of  God's 
predestination  of  him  unto  sonship  through  Jesus 
Christ  unto  Himself. 

There  is  a  yet  further  propriety  which  we  may  dis- 


The  Glory  of  the  Only  Begotten         53 

cover  in  the  interchangeableness  and  almost  identity 
of  the  two  terms  Logos  and  Son  as  applied  to  our  Lord. 
Not  only  is  son  the  natural  and  true  correlative  and 
self -utterance  of  father,  but  Father,  and  not  Maker  or 
Lord  or  any  lower  term,  can  alone  express  the  actual 
relation  of  God  to  the  all-else  that  proceeds  from  Him. 
Just  as  we  say,  that  not  Eternity,  nor  Wisdom,  nor 
Power,  nor  anything  else,  but  only  Love  can  truly 
express  what  God  Himself  is  —  Love,  which  gives  of 
itself  in  others,  in  order  that  it  may  give  more  of  itself 
to  others. 

There  is  a  propriety  in  viewing  and  designating 
Creation  as  a  whole  as  Son  of  God,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
all  One,  and,  as  it  came  from,  so  it  is  destined  to  return 
to  Him  in  the  final  inheritance  of  sonship.  "The 
earnest  expectation  of  the  creation  waiteth  for  the 
revealing  of  the  sons  of  God,"  and  will  find  in  them 
the  meaning  and  interpretation  of  itself. 

But  it  is  not  so  much  as  eternal  and  essential  Logos 
of  God,  nor  yet  as  Logos  of  creation  as  a  whole,  as 
when  we  view  our  incarnate  Lord  as  Logos,  divine 
definition  and  revelation,  of  man,  that  we  see  its  full 
and  necessary  interpretation  in  sonship.  The  glory  of 
the  Only -begotten  is  the  realization  and  revelation  of 
the  end  of  evolution  in  the  deification  of  humanity. 
The  crowning  glory  of  Jesus  Christ  was  not  that  which 
He  had  with  the  Father  before  the  world  was;  nor 
yet  that  which  He  brought  with  Him  into  the  world 
when  He  came  forth  from  the  Father;  it  was 
that  which  He  wrought  as  man  in  the  world,  the 


54  The  Reason  of  Life 

act  and  achievement  by  which  He  made  humanity 
divine. 

This  brings  us  to  enquire  into  the  meaning  of  certain 
expressions  which  we  much  use  and  very  little  construe 
to  ourselves.  How  much  and  what  has  Jesus  Christ 
taught  or  revealed  to  us  of  God  —  what,  and  how? 
"No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time;  the  Only- 
begotten  Son  which  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  He 
hath  declared  Him."  Declared  Him  in  words?  de- 
fined Him  in  terms,  and  propositions,  and  syllogisms? 
"Jesus  saith,  I  am  the  Way,  and  the  Truth,  and  the 
Life;  no  one  cometh  to  the  Father  but  by  me."  The 
way  to  the  Father,  the  truth  of  the  Father,  the  life  of 
the  Father  —  they  are  all  He,  not  merely  His  teaching 
or  declaration.  "If  ye  had  known  Me,  ye  would  have 
known  my  Father  also :  from  henceforth  ye  know  Him, 
and  have  seen  Him."  "How  sayest  thou,  Show  us 
the  Father?  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the 
Father."  "He  hath  declared  Him," — in  the  word  we 
have  translated  "declare"  is  there  not  something  more 
than  mere  declaration:  "  expounded,  interpreted,  or 
expressed  Him "  ?  God  is  elsewhere  described  as  He 
"whom  no  one  hath  seen,  or  can  see."  He  is  visible 
only  in  whatsoever  manifests  Him,  or  manifests  what 
He  is :  as  when  St.  John  says  elsewhere,  "  No  man  hath 
beheld  God  at  any  time;  if  we  love,  God  abideth  in 
us;  because  God  is  Love,"  and  love  is  God. 

All  this  brings  us  back  to  the  truth  that,  as  in  Jesus 
Christ  the  Father  is  revealed  in  the  Son,  and  only  in 
the  Son,  so  in  general,  and  essentially,  fatherhood  is 


The  Glory  of  the  Only  Begotten         55 

known,  or  revealed,  or  indeed  exists,  in  and  only  in 
sonship.  The  whole  truth  of  Christianity  is  realized 
and  expressed  in  the  fact  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  as 
manifested  in  the  sonship  of  Jesus  Christ :  for  what  is 
true  of  Him  in  His  humanity,  is  made  true  for  humanity 
in  Him.  As  in  Jesus  Christ  the  Father  was  revealed 
or  declared  in  the  act  and  fact  of  His  perfectly 
accomplished  Sonship,  so  in  us  too  God  is  seen,  or  is 
known,  or  (so  far  as  we  are  concerned)  is,  only  in 
the  sonship  in  ourselves  which  constitutes  Him  our 
Father. 

In  response  then  to  the  question,  what  of  God  we 
see  and  know  in  Jesus  Christ,  I  answer:  All  of  God  that 
is  communicable  to  us,  or  receivable  by  us.  That  is 
the  same  as  to  say  that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  consum- 
mated fulness  of  the  relation  between  God  and  us. 
In  Him,  God  is  in  a  sense  become  our  Father,  through 
our  becoming  sons  or  children  of  God  in  Him.  He  has 
brought  us  into  that  consummated  relation  of  children 
to  God  in  which  God  is  no  longer  only  potentially  but 
now  actually  our  Father.  Of  course  potentially  and 
causally  fatherhood  is  prior  to  sonship,  but  actually 
and  effectually  it  is  realized  only  in  sonship:  if  the 
former  is  cause  of  the  latter,  at  any  rate  it  is  effected 
only  in  and  through  the  latter. 

However  it  may  have  been  the  nature  and  the  natural 
destiny  of  man  to  become  son  of  God,  let  it  not  be 
imagined  that  he  could  have  become  so  by  a  mere  imma- 
nent process  of  natural  evolution,  that  is,  by  the  opera- 
tion of  laws  and  forces  wholly  within  himself.  It  is 


56  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  nature  and  destiny  of  an  acorn  to  become  an  oak; 
not,  however,  by  causes  and  activities  altogether  within 
itself,  but  only  in  reaction  and  cooperation  with  agents 
outside  itself.  And  the  oak  is  the  result  and  expression, 
not  of  the  acorn  alone,  but  no  less  of  all  the  influences 
and  agencies  that  conspired  to  produce  it.  If  we  so 
readily  recognize  reaction  and  interaction  with  environ- 
ment in  natural  things,  why  not  equally  expect  and 
look  for  it  in  spiritual  things?  "Word"  and  "Spirit" 
most  simply  and  exactly  express  media  of  relation  and 
reaction  between  us  and  God,  out  of  or  apart  from 
which  we  can  as  little  become  all  ourselves  as  the  seed 
can  apart  from  sun  and  soil. 

That  "God  predestined  us  to  sonship  through  Jesus 
Christ  unto  Himself,"  means  that  only  through  rela- 
tions and  communications  of  Word  and  Spirit  from 
and  with  Himself  could  we  attain  unto  the  destiny 
which  is  none  the  less  our  natural  end  because  it  is  our 
supernatural  destination.  That  God  eternally  predeter- 
mined us  means  that  He  actually  and  in  time  determines 
us  to  sonship;  and  the  question  of  practical  interest  is, 
How  does  He  do  so?  And  more  particularly,  How  does 
He  do  so  through  Jesus  Christ?  In  the  choice  of  such 
words  themselves  as  "Word"  and  "Spirit,"  we  have 
something  of  definition  and  description  —  as  on  the 
one  hand,  of  the  divine  agents  and  agencies,  so  equally 
on  the  other,  of  the  human  operations  proceeding  from 
them.  "  Word  "  is  not  only  the  expression  of  and  from 
reason,  intelligence,  understanding,  but  equally  the 
expression  to  these.  If  Jesus  Christ  is  God's  Word  to 


The  Glory  of  the  Only  Begotten         57 

us,  and  it  is  through  Jesus  Christ  that  God  determines 
us  to  sonship,  it  follows  that  God  calls  us  to  sonship 
primarily  through  divine  appeal  to,  and  human  response 
of,  our  own  reason,  intelligence,  and  understanding. 
Only  we  ourselves  can  be  sons,  in  the  full  sense;  we 
cannot  be  made  so  otherwise  than  as  we  make  ourselves. 
God  makes  us  only  potentially  sons;  that  is,  not  only 
endows  us  with  natures  and  faculties  to  become  so, 
but  brings  us  into  the  gracious  relation  of  sons.  To  be 
sons,  however,  actually,  or  to  be  so  in  ourselves,  must 
be  of  ourselves.  Otherwise  we  are  not  sons  indeed; 
for  sonship,  in  the  truer  sense  of  it,  is  not  a  merely 
natural  or  objective  relation,  but  a  subjective  and 
personal  one.  The  appeal  of  Jesus  Christ  to  us, 
or  of  God  to  us  in  Christ,  is  the  most  immediate 
and  direct  possible,  because  it  is  not  only  the 
appeal  to  our  whole  nature,  but  the  call  to  our 
completest  and  most  perfect  selves.  But  it  cannot  be 
to  us  more  than  an  appeal  and  a  call;  God  can  fulfil 
Himself  in  us  only  in  us  —  that  is  to  say,  in  what  we 
ourselves  are.  "Our  wills  (ourselves)  are  ours,  we 
know  not  how;  our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  Thine 
(God's)."  That  "making  ourselves  God's"  is  what 
alone  makes  us,  not  only  persons,  but  spiritual  per- 
sons, children  of  God. 

But  God  appeals  not  alone  to  our  intelligence,  to  our 
knowledge  and  understanding  of  ourselves  and  of  Him. 
He  appeals  yet  more  strongly  to  our  affections:  feeling, 
affection,  will  and  disposition,  as  well  as  reason  —  all 
that  constitutes  and  characterizes  us  —  is  what  He 


58  The  Reason  of  Life 

wants,  and  what  He  speaks  to  by  His  Word,  through 
His  Spirit,  in  Jesus  Christ. 

The  Word,  which  is  Jesus  Christ,  is  Life  objectively 
revealed.  The  Spirit,  which  is  the  Holy  Ghost,  is  Life 
subjectively  received  and  shared.  Both  divine  revela- 
tion and  human  appropriation  or  reception  are  essen- 
tially transcendent  acts  and  not  immanent  processes. 
Religion  in  all  its  parts  is  a  matter  between  us  as  with- 
out God,  and  God  as  without  us — though  a  "without" 
in  both  cases  to  be  converted  into  a"  within."  Religion 
is  essentially  an  "  at-one-ment "  out  of  a  previous 
"at-two-ness."  It  is  no  mere  subjective  play  or  process 
of  a  divinity  wholly  within  us,  a  divinity  of  our  own. 
God  in  endowing  us  with  reason  and  with  freedom, 
has  given  us  the  power  of  objectifying  Life  to  ourselves, 
and  so  making  it  both  a  light  and  a  law  to  us  from  with- 
out. Rather,  and  more  truly,  I  should  say,  He  has 
given  us  the  power  of  seeing  Life  objectively,  in  Him 
and  in  All  as  well  as  in  ourselves:  and  so  seeing  it  as 
what  it  really  is,  a  light  and  a  law  to  all  who  have  eyes 
to  see  and  wills  to  obey.  Life  thus  becomes  to  us,  not 
merely  an  immanent  fact,  but  a  transcendent  act  on 
our  part.  It  is  something  from  without  and  above  us 
which  we  must  know  in  order  to  attain,  and  attain  in 
order  truly  to  know.  That  is  to  say,  we  need  to  know 
it  as  something  without  and  beyond  us  before  we  can 
know  it  as  something  from  without  within  us.  God's 
part  is  (1)  by  His  Word,  and  (2)  by  His  Spirit;  our  part 
is  (1)  faith  in  response  to  the  Word,  and  (2)  works 
or  life  in  obedience  to  and  fulfilment  of  the  Spirit. 


The  Glory  of  the  Only  Begotten        59 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  it  is  not  possible  to 
know  God  except  in  Trinity,  —  not  a  trinity  of  specu- 
lative and  metaphysical  thought,  but  the  actual  and 
practical  Trinity,  in  which  God  has  made  Himself 
knowable  and  known  to  us  —  without  us  by  His  Word, 
and  within  us  through  His  Spirit.  I  might  add  in  fur- 
ther explication  or  analogy  that  our  relation  to  ourselves 
and  to  the  world  around  us  is  no  longer,  as  with  beings 
below  us,  a  merely  immanent  one,  but  distinctly  also 
a  transcendent  one.  We  see  and  know  and  determine 
ourselves  from  without,  and  are  not  only  determined 
by  ourselves  from  within.  The  Self  in  us,  or  personal- 
ity, comes  from  and  consists  in  the  reason  and  freedom 
which  are  distinctively  acts  and  activities  of  transcen- 
dent vision  and  direction.  We  have  a  relative  indepen- 
dence, not  only  of  God  and  the  world,  but  even  of 
ourselves,  quite  sufficient  to  enable  us  eternally  to  make 
or  mar  ourselves. 

As  little  are  we  in  any  merely  immanent  relation  with 
the  world  around  us.  We  are  in  it  and  of  it,  and  yet 
are  also  without  it  and  can  be  above  it.  The  fact  that 
we  know  it,  and  that  we  can  in  a  thousand  ways,  right 
or  wrong,  wise  or  unwise,  conform  ourselves  with  it  or 
not,  constitutes  for  us  a  relative  independence  of  it 
that  is  not  only  a  fact,  but  the  distinctive  and  character- 
istic fact  with  regard  to  ourselves  and  our  position  in 
the  world. 

And  this  fact  of  facts  extends  no  less,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  our  relation  with  God  Himself.  Just  the 
essential  truth  of  religion  is,  that  God  is  not  merely 


60  The  Reason  of  Life 

immanent  in  us  or  we  in  Him,  but  that  He  is  transcen- 
dent. The  immanence  exists,  and  so  far  as  the  world 
is  concerned,  exists  sole  and  alone  up  to  the  moment  in 
which  reason  and  freedom  are  born  into  it.  But  so 
soon  as  these  appear,  as  we  come  to  know  ourselves, 
the  world,  and  God,  and  know  them,  not  merely  as 
objects  of  knowledge,  but  as  objects  of  personal  relation 
and  obligation  —  that  moment  our  relation  to  them 
becomes  transcendent,  and  ethics  and  religion  become 
possible  and  necessary.  There  only  remains  then  the 
relation  and  distinction  between  ethics  and  religion; 
and  that  may  be  given  in  a  brief  discussion  of  the  word 
which  just  here  looms  most  into  prominence:  "The 
Word  became  flesh,  and  dwelt  among  us,  full  of  grace." 
"Of  His  fulness  we  all  received,  and  grace  for  grace. 
For  the  law  was  given  by  Moses;  grace  and  truth  came 
by  Jesus  Christ."  Grace  is  communicated  Life  — 
life  imparted  from  without  through  our  organs  of 
spiritual  reception  and  appropriation  and  assimilation. 
It  is  the  life  of  God  made  or  become  our  life,  through 
faith,  hope,  and  love.  The  life  of  God,  as  presented 
to  us  for  these,  and  through  these,  is  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

We  may  turn  again  to  observe  how,  in  the  Scriptures, 
all  life  is  treated  as  One;  and  one  origin  and  account 
is  given  of  it  in  all  its  stages.  The  Word  of  God  is 
everywhere  the  source  and  cause  of  all  being:  "In  It, 
or  in  Him,  was  life."  That  was  its  universal  and  abso- 
lute beginning,  outside  of  God  Himself.  This,  as  I 
have  said,  need  not  mean  temporal  beginning;  it  may 


The  Glory  of  the  Only  Begotten         61 

be  simply  causal  beginning,  or  principle.  How  did  it 
become,  not  merely  life,  but  rational  life?  The  life 
became  the  light  of  man,  with  the  birth  of  reason :  that 
is  to  say,  as  the  Word  of  God  immanent  in  the  world, 
and  highest  in  humanity,  developed  for  itself  a  faculty 
and  a  vision,  became  visible  to  itself  in  the  mind  of 
man,  God  passed  for  him  from  immanent  into  tran- 
cendent  and  objective :  man  began  to  know  God  outside 
himself,  and  himself  outside  of  God.  Then  entered 
the  Law,  of  which  Moses  was  the  culminating  repre- 
sentative and  symbol.  God  is  not  simply  and  neces- 
sarily, de  facto,  in  man  and  man  in  God,  as  would  be 
the  case  if  their  relation  were  only  an  immanent  one. 
Quite  another  thing  —  God  ought  to  be  in  man  and 
man  in  God:  the  "  ought  "  referring  altogether  to  the 
free  choice  and  reception  of  men,  and  having  neither 
place  nor  meaning  apart  from  these.  The  relation, 
in  other  words,  has  become  transcendent  and  objective, 
personal  and  ethical. 

The  One  and  the  Same  Word  of  God  that  was  life 
in  the  world  even  before  reason  appeared;  that  was 
reason  and  law  in  the  world  of  men  to  whom  life  was 
become  light  —  that  same  Divine  Word  had  yet  a 
higher  manifestation  and  communication  of  Himself 
to  make  to  "  men  of  good  will." 


VI 
GRACE  TO  BECOME  SONS 

THE  love  of  God,  the  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
the  fellowship  of  the  Holy  Ghost!  —  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that,  expressed  in  terms  of  their  essential  natures 
and  functions,  God  is  Love,  Jesus  Christ  is  Grace,  the 
Holy  Ghost  is  Fellowship.  In  these  three  terms  we 
have  all  the  divine  constituents  in  human  life:  that  is 
to  say,  we  have  the  full  expression  and  description  of 
what  God  is  in  His  relation  to  our  own  personal  life. 
In  what  fulness  and  exactness  of  meaning  do  we  say 
that  God  is  our  life  —  not  natural  now,  but  spiritual 
and  personal?  The  life  of  God,  as  distinguished  from 
His  mere  being  or  metaphysical  nature  —  what  we 
venture  to  call  His  personal  life  —  is  best  and  fully 
expressed  in  terms,  or  under  the  specific  designation, 
of  that  which  is  not  only  His  most  characteristic  activ- 
ity, but  is  the  spirit  and  principle  of  all  His  activities. 
There  is  only  one  word  that  really  defines  or  expresses 
God;  all  others  applied  to  Him  are  only  formal,  not 
real  designations  of  Him.  To  say,  for  example,  that 
God  is  truth,  is  only  to  say  that  God  is  "  that  which 
is  ";  it  does  not  say  What  He  is.  To  say  that  God 
is  righteousness,  is  only  to  say  that  He  is  right,  that 
He  is  that  to  which  we  are  under  obligation;  it  does 

62 


Grace  to  Become  Sons  63 

not  tell  what  right  or  righteousness  is,  and  conse- 
quently what  He  is.  We  only  tell  essentially  and 
really  what  God  is,  when  we  say  that  God  is  Love, 
or  Goodness;  these  are  the  only  terms  which  have  a 
real  and  determinate  content.  Love  is  the  willing  of 
Good;  and  the  willing  of  good  is  Goodness. 

Now  there  is  no  question  as  to  what  Good  is;  every 
being's  nature  absolutely  determines  and  defines  its 
good:  its  good  is  the  fulfilment  and  satisfaction  of  its 
nature.  The  one  real  good  that,  in  the  whole  realm  of 
possibility  or  actuality,  we  can  know,  or  possess,  or 
enjoy,  is  Life  in  its  fulness  and  its  freedom.  We  know 
therefore  precisely  what  Good  is,  and  what  Goodness, 
or  the  will  of  the  good,  is.  The  only  other  good  than 
life  itself  is  whatsoever  truly  ministers  to  life.  Meta- 
physics tells  us  that  there  is  no  other  motive  or  end  of 
desire  or  of  action  than  either  the  perfection  or  the 
blessedness  of  life:  and  that  these  two  things  are  so 
exactly  coincident  as  to  be  practically  identical.  Good 
is  Life,  or  whatsoever  ministers  to  life. 

Love  or  Goodness  is  willing  good  to  others  —  willing 
to  all  others  the  good  which  we  first  know,  possess,  and 
enjoy  in  ourselves.  It  is  the  desire  and  disposition  to 
share  with  others  the  good  which  is  our  own  life  and 
our  own  selves.  When  Jesus  Christ  speaks  of  "giving 
His  life  for  many,"  the  word  used  does  not  mean 
literal  or  merely  bodily  life,  it  means  His  soul,  His  very 
Self.  The  love  and  goodness  of  God  has  but  one  mean- 
ing and  one  purpose  in  the  world  of  His  creation.  He 
has  given  to  all  things  to  have  life;  He  has  given  to 


64  The  Reason  of  Life 

man  to  know,  and  personally  to  live,  life;  He  has 
given  us  in  Christ  all  the  fulness  and  all  the  blessedness 
of  the  Life  which  is  Himself,  and  which  He  has  con- 
stituted us,  and  now  enables  us,  to  know,  to  possess, 
and  to  enjoy. 

God  is  Love;  and,  next,  Jesus  Christ  is  Grace.  Grace 
is  love  applied,  love  in  operation  or  in  eftect  You  look 
for  love  in  the  subject  of  it  —  in  this  case,  in  God; 
you  look  for  grace  in  the  object  of  it,  in  man.  Grace 
is  God  Self-communicated,  Life  Self-imparted,  Good 
and  Goodness  shared  and  reproduced.  In  Jesus  Christ 
God  has  not  given  us  somewhat  from  Him,  He  has 
given  us  His  life,  Himself. 

Incarnation  is  something  vastly  more  than  imma- 
nence; but  the  difference  is  not  so  much  in  God  and 
His  part  in  it,  as  in  us  and  our  relation  to  it.  God  is 
so  much  more  in  us  than  in  the  clod,  only  because  we 
have  become  so  much  more  than  the  clod.  The  full 
half  of  the  Gospel  as  the  "power  of  God  unto  salva- 
tion," is  not  in  the  coming  of  God  to  us  in  and  by  His 
Word,  but  in  the  bringing  us  to  Him  by  His  Spirit. 
Fellowship  with  God,  sharing  His  spirit,  His  nature, 
His  life,  Himself,  His  goodness  and  His  good,  His 
perfection  and  His  blessedness,  is  the  sum  and  the 
substance  of  Christianity.  It  is  all  that  God  has  to 
give  or  we  to  receive.  But  the  doubt  or  difficulty  in 
the  matter  of  the  divine  fellowship  is  all  on  our  side. 
It  was  easier  for  the  Word  aptare  Deum  homini — even 
through  descent  to  the  Cross  —  than  it  is  for  the 
Spirit  aptare  hominem  Deo.  Nevertheless  God,  and 


Grace  to  Become  Sons  65 

His  life,  and  His  good,  can  be  ours  only  through  that 
fitting  of  ourselves  to  Him,  only  as  we  do  actually 
receive  and  share  Him. 

Therefore  I  say  that  it  is  only  from  God  the  Father, 
through  God  the  Son  and  by  God  the  Holy  Ghost, 
that  we  can  so  have  and  know  God  as  to  be  partakers 
of  Eternal  Life.  We  know  God  only  in  Jesus  Christ 
and  in  ourselves:  that  is  to  say,  we  know  Him  only 
by  His  Word  to  us,  as  the  principle  and  medium  of  His 
objective  Self -revelation  and  communication;  and  by 
His  Spirit  within  us,  as  the  principle  of  our  own  sub- 
jective reception  and  appropriation.  Thug  the  whole 
matter  of  Life  from  God  and  life  in  us  is  expressed  in 
the  single  comprehensive  term  Grace. 

Grace,  which  is  thus  almost  the  distinctive  term  of 
the  New  Testament,  is  used  (1)  to  express  an  eternal 
and  essential  disposition  of  God.  Grace  was  in  the 
world  before  €Be~Law  cameTTE  is  older  than  Moses. 
It  is  older  than  Faith,  and  was  before  Abraham.  It 
is  older  than  Adam,  or  Man:  it  was  in  the  nature,  in 
the  heart  and  mind  of  God  before  the  world  was.  All 
appearances  and  all  facts  to  the  contrary  notwithstand- 
ing, the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  world  is  an  act 
of  grace.  God  created  not  only  by  and  from  but  for 
Himself :  the  end,  which  is  always  before  the  beginning 
in  rational  creation,  was  and  is  for  divine  Self -communi- 
cation, Self-impartation.  God  creates  only  that  He 
may  bless;  the  only  sense  in  which  it  is  true  that  He 
created  for  his  own  glory  is,  that  His  glory  is  His  love, 
His  grace,  His  divine  sympathy  and  fellowship  with 
6 


66  The  Reason  of  Life 

His  creation.  It  is  true,  first  and  most,  in  God  himself, 
that  blessedness  finds  itself  in  giving  rather  than  in 
receiving.  He  created  in  order  that  He  might  have 
whereto  to  give,  wherein  to  impart,  Himself:  the  end 
of  creation  is  God  in  His  creation. 

If  it  be  asked,  how  we  know  this  initial  and  ultimate 
truth  of  God  —  the  answer  is  easy.  In  the  first  place, 
it  is  written  in  ourselves,  who  are  not  only  the  creatures, 
but  the  children  and  image  of  God.  The  world  finds 
its  intention  preeminently  in  us,  and  that  intention 
becomes  ever  more  and  more  plain  as  we  learn  better 
to  know  ourselves,  and  in  knowing  ourselves  know 
God.  The  world  foresees  that,  what  it  is  coming  to  as 
the  true  end  and  law  of  its  being,  is  the  truth  that  life 
and  blessedness,  with  us  as  with  God,  and  with  God  as 
with  us,  are  in  giving  rather  than  in  receiving,  and  that 
the  more  that  principle  and  spirit  and  law  prevail,  the 
more  we  fulfil  ourselves,  and  the  nearer  we  draw  to 
God.  The  true  nature  and  law  of  things  are  what  they 
are  coming  to,  and  not  what  they  already  are.  That 
love,  service,  and  sacrifice  are  life,  and  that  hate, 
selfishness,  and  oppression  are  death,  Christianity  has 
already  made  a  commonplace  of  thought  and  speech; 
when  it  has  made  it  a  commonplace  of  conduct, 
character,  and  life,  it  will  have  come  to  its  own. 

In  the  second  place,  the  truth  of  God  and  man  we 
are  insisting  upon  is  just  that  which  was  revealed  and 
given  to  the  world  in  Jesus  Christ.  The  light  was 
always  in  the  world,  but  it  shone  in  the  darkness,  and 
the  darkness  comprehended  it  not.  The  simple  fact 


Grace  to  Become  Sons  67 

that  the  Son  of  Man,  He  who  came  to  reveal  to  man 
the  truth  that  was  in  him,  and  the  truth  that  is  God, 
came  not  to  be  served,  but  to  serve  —  to  be  servant  of 
all,  and  to  give  His  life,  His  soul,  Himself,  in  behalf  of 
all  —  that  simple  fact  teaches  at  once  what  God  is, 
and  what  man  is. 

Grace  then  is  primarily  the  eternal  nature  and  pre- 
destination of  God.  If  it  is  asked,  what  there  is  in  it 
in  Him  which  distinguishes  it  from  simply  Love,  we 
answer  that,  from  the  first,  it  is  love,  if  not  expressed 
in,  yet  at  least  with  the  purpose  of,  action,  love  that 
means  and  looks  forward  to  self-bestowal.  All  that 
goes  before  that  ultimate  participation  in  God  which  is 
the  destiny  of  creation,  is  the  evolution  of  being  or 
beings  capable  of  participating  in  Him.  That  this 
capacity  should  come  through  eons  of  preparation, 
and  that  this  preparation  should  be  through  eons  of 
poverty,  pain,  and  toil;  that  the  earnest  expectation 
of  the  creation  should  have  so  long  to  wait  for  the 
manifestation,  or  revealing,  of  the  sons  of  God;  that 
it  should  so  groan  and  travail  in  pain,  while  it  longs  and 
hopes  for  deliverance  from  the  bondage  of  corruption 
into  the  liberty  of  the  glory  of  the  children  of  God  — 
does  not  contradict  the  truth  that  the  meaning  of  it  all 
is  fruition,  possession,  and  blessedness  in  the  end. 
That  life  in  the  world  should  have  had  to  undergo  the 
pangs  of  birth  in  the  acquisition  of  reason,  self-knowl- 
edge, and  freedom;  that  it  should  have  to  endure  the 
discipline,  the  hard  demands,  and  the  penalties  of  law; 
that  it  should  have  to  learn  to  know  and  achieve  free- 


68  The  Reason  of  Life 

dom  through  bondage,  holiness  through  sin,  and  life 
through  death  —  all  this  is  not  without  a  reason  into 
which  we  may  ourselves  begin  to  penetrate.  All  things 
are  subject  to  the  law  and  necessity  of  making  and 
becoming  themselves,  just  because  the  One  thing  up  to 
which  they  are  all  moving,  and  for  which  they  all  are, 
Selfhood  and  Sonship,  reception  and  reproduction  of 
the  life  and  likeness  of  God,  can  only  thus,  through 
the  long  and  painful  process  of  self-becoming,  become 
at  all.  "Ourselves  also,  which  have  the  first-fruits  of 
the  Spirit,  even  we  ourselves  groan  within  ourselves, 
waiting  for  our  adoption,  the  redemption  of  our 
body." 

But  (2)  Grace  as  a  divine  act  as  well  as  disposition 
becomes  the  special  function  of  that  (for  lack  of  a 
better  term  of  differentiation  in  the  being  and  activi- 
ties of  God)  Person  of  the  Godhead,  through  Whom 
are  mediated  all  God's  operations  in  creation,  and  who 
is  known  primarily  as  the  Word  of  God.  It  has  been 
intimated  that  all  created  being,  simply  as  such,  is  an 
act  of  grace,  inasmuch  as  it  is,  so  far  as  it  is  its  nature 
and  law  to  go,  self-communication  on  God's  part. 
Grace  becomes  more  and  more,  as  receptivity  and 
recipient  become  more  —  until,  capacity  and  faculty 
for  sonship  prepared  and  provided,  Sonship  from  God 
comes  to  fill  and  satisfy  it,  by  incarnation  in  it. 

Incarnation  was  no  after-thought  of  God,  nor  after- 
need  of  man.  It  was  part  —  and  highest,  therefore 
latest,  part  —  of  the  process  of  creation  or  evolution, 
which  is  one  from  beginning  to  end,  and  whose  end 


Grace  to  Become  Sons  69 

was  already  in,  and  even  before,  its  beginning.  Let  it 
be  remembered  that,  in  speaking  of  beginning,  I 
always  mean  logical  and  causal,  and  not  necessarily 
temporal  beginning.  Creation  has  its  reason,  its  mean- 
ing, its  interpretation  and  fulfilment  in  Jesus  Christ, 
in  whom  at  last  God  is  wholly  in  it,  as  it  is  wholly  in 
God.  But  God  is  in  it  with  a  distinction  and  a  differ- 
ence between  His  modes  of  presence  in  it  first  and  last. 
He  is  in  it  in  Jesus  Christ,  not  by  immanence  of  nature, 
but,  in  transcendence  of  nature,  by  operation  in  it  of 
Word  and  Spirit  —  which,  while  also  He,  are  never- 
theless to  be  properly  distinguished  from  Him. 

Grace  (3),  always  in  the  World,  comes  into  it  in  an 
eminent  degree  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  Just 
wherein  that  grace  consists,  and  what  form  it  takes, 
depends  upon  the  specific  nature  and  needs  of  those 
who  are  to  be  at  once  its  objects  and  its  subjects.  The 
initial  act  of  grace  as  Incarnation  in  Jesus  Christ 
incorporates  and  expresses  a  principle  which  character- 
izes its  entire  operation:  "Because  the  children  are 
partakers  of  flesh  and  blood,  He  also  Himself  in  like 
manner  partook  of  the  same."  The  principle  expressed 
is  this:  Grace,  or  Love  in  action,  conforms  and  adapts 
itself  precisely  to  its  objects  or  subjects,  and  to  the 
needs  and  wants  to  be  supplied.  Grace  becomes  both 
to  us  and  in  us  just  what  we  want,  and  in  the  form  and 
manner  in  which  it  is  possible  and  proper  for  us  to 
receive  it.  So  Jesus  Christ  is  the  life  of  God,  object- 
ively to  us,  and  subjectively  in  us,  in  that  degree  and 
manner  in  which  we  can  and  ought,  according  to  our 


70  The  Reason  of  Life 

nature,  to  become  partakers  of  the  divine  life  and 
nature.  The  acts  or  processes,  in  us  and  by  us,  through 
which  that  can  be,  are  —  our  at-one-ment  with  God, 
our  redemption  from  sin,  and  our  resurrection  from 
death.  All  these  Jesus  Christ  accomplished  and  was 
in  our  nature;  and  accomplishes  and  becomes  in  our- 
selves. What  God  accomplishes  in  humanity  by  His 
grace,  humanity  accomplishes  in  God  through  its 
faith.  Jesus  Christ  as  the  both  divinely  and  humanly 
accomplished  Unity  of  God  and  man,  is  both  God  and 
man  in  the  matter  —  the  grace  by  and  the  faith 
through  which  we  live. 

Grace  (4)  is  finally  and  immediately  the  work  in  us 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  —  through  Whom,  in  sequence  and 
conjunction  with  the  Word,  are  mediated  all  those 
divine  operations  upon  the  earth  that  we  might  char- 
acterize as  subjective:  that  is  to  say,  all  the  influences 
which,  in  the  beings  themselves  who  are  the  subjects 
of  them,  draw,  or  fit,  or  assimilate  them  to  God,  and 
make  them  in  their  measure  partakers  of  His  nature. 
It  is  in  keeping  with  this  that  it  is  said  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  that  He  takes  of  the  things  of  Jesus,  of  the 
objectively  revealed  Word  of  God,  and  "  shows,"  or 
interprets  and  imparts  them  to  us.  He  works  in  us 
the  subjective  appreciation,  appropriation,  and  par- 
ticipation of  a  truth  and  a  life  which  come  to  us  from 
without  and  from  above.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  the 
Holy  Ghost  is  to  us  "the  Giver  of  life"— the  life  He 
gives  being  the  incarnate  Word  and  Son  of  God.  Thus 
the  Life  that  was  originally  and  eternally  in  God,  and 


Grace  to  Become  Sons  71 

was  God:  that  was  mediately  in,  and  cause  of,  all 
else:  that  was  then  humanly  and  personally  in  the 
world  in  Jesus  Christ  —  that  life  of  God  and  of  Jesus 
Christ  His  Son,  is  in  us  by  impartation  and  participa- 
tion of  His  Spirit. 

How  Christ  is  in  us  by  His  Spirit:  accomplishes  in 
us  and  by  us  all  that  He  accomplished  for  us:  and  so 
makes  us  by  His  grace  what  He  is,  sons  and  heirs  of 
God  —  that  is  just  the  practical  and  actual  Christian- 
ity which  we  need  to  recover  and  to  know.  If  there  be 
mystery  in  it,  as  there  is  in  all  divine  operations  and 
in  all  natural  facts  and  processes,  it  is  not  a  mystery 
which  cannot  be  rationally  stated  and  spiritually 
apprehended. 

The  life  of  Jesus  Christ  upon  earth  was  a  human 
fact  and  act.  If  it  was,  taken  as  a  unit  and  a  whole,  a 
life  at  one  with  God  —  and  so,  sinless  and  deathless  — 
it  was  a  human  life  made  so  by  His  own  redeeming  and 
quickening  act  in  it.  There  is  nothing  in  that  act  of 
human  regeneration  and  resurrection  different  in  kind 
from  any  and  every  human  life,  as  it  is,  naturally  and 
supernaturally,  constituted  and  purposed  to  be,  and 
ought  eventually  to  be.  Our  lives  are  ours  to  make 
them  God's,  and  they  are  God's  only  as  we  make  them 
so.  If  God  by  mere  word  or  power  without,  and  not 
also  by  spirit  within  —  that  is  by  our  own  cooperant 
act  —  should  make  our  lives  His,  they  would  not  be 
ours  so  made:  there  cannot  be  an  "ours"  without 
"us."  We  see  in  Jesus  Christ  a  human  life  at  one  with 
God,  "made  God's":  and  the  act  by  which  He  made 


72  The  Reason  of  Life 

it  so,  we  call  an  act  of  reconciliation,  of  at-one- 
ment,  or  atonement. 

We  see  in  Jesus  Christ  human  life,  not  only  recon- 
ciled or  made  one  with  God,  but  thereby  and  therein 
redeemed  from  sin,  made  sinless  or  holy.  That  again  is 
in  no  wise  contradictory  to  the  proper  course  of  human 
nature  or  life  in  general.  Sin  or  vice  is  not  the  proper  or 
true  law  of  human  life;  on  the  contrary,  virtue  is,  and 
holiness  and  righteousness.  The  spotless  virtue,  the 
perfect  holiness  or  righteousness  of  Jesus  Christ,  which 
was  in  itself  in  our  nature  a  redemption  from  sin,  was 
His  own  act  in  humanity,  and  precisely  the  act  by 
which  alone  humanity  redeems  itself  from  sin.  If 
humanity  cannot  be  holy  or  sinless  by  act  of  itself, 
its  only  redemption  from  sin  is  through  the  death  of 
itself  into  the  life  of  God. 

We  see  in  Jesus  Christ  humanity  raised  up  out 
of  inevitable  death  in  itself  into  assured  and  eternal 
life  in  God.  And  again,  this  is  no  contradiction  of 
evolution,  no  contradiction  to  the  true  and  essential 
nature  and  destination  of  man:  for  it  is  as  natural  for 
him  to  pass  from  human  into  divine  life,  as  to  have 
passed  from  animal  into  rational  and  human  life. 
If  in  each  act  or  process  of  personal  transition  from 
stage  to  stage,  there  is  involved  a  putting  off  of 
old  nature,  a  dying  from  one  mode  of  relation  to 
environment  to  live  in  another  mode  of  relation  to 
environment  and  to  self:  if,  as  the  rational  man  has 
to  die  from  the  brute  or  the  animal  that  he  was,  so  the 
spiritual  or  divine  man  has  to  die  from  his  mere  selfhood 


Grace  to  Become  Sons  73 

which  nevertheless  was  a  necessary  stage  of  his  devel- 
opment —  all  this,  I  affirm,  is  part  and  essential  part 
of  the  law  of  successive  natural,  rational,  moral,  and 
spiritual  evolution. 

Why  this  evolution  cannot  have  been  all  and  only 
immanent:  why  there  needed  to  come  in  from  without 
and  from  above  an  objective,  actual  and  historical, 
realization,  revelation,  and  demonstration  of  human 
life  divinely  accomplished,  of  God  manifest  in  man  and 
of  man  self-completed  in  God,  is  a  question  to  which 
something  of  an  answer  may  be  suggested  as  follows: 
To  begin  with,  if  religion,  considered  only  on  our  part, 
is  a  transcendent  act,  an  act  of  objective  attitude  and 
relation,  a  conscious  and  free  going  out  of  ourselves  to 
a  Spirit  and  Life  of  the  universe  which,  however  it  may 
include  and  be  in  us,  yet  is  infinitely  without  and 
transcends  us  —  if,  I  say,  religion  is  thus  distinctly  tran- 
scendent on  our  part,  why  must  it  not  be  similarly 
transcendent  on  God's  part?  Why  must  it  not  be 
God,  as  it  were,  coming  forth  from  Himself  to  meet  us, 
who  —  in  a  relative  sense  at  least,  in  consciousness 
and  in  freedom  —  are  as  objective  to  Him  as  He  to  us? 
How  can  we,  by  instinct,  by  reason,  in  freedom  and 
in  personal  act  and  life,  go  forth  of  ourselves  to  meet 
an  infinite  and  divine  Not-Ourselves,  which  does  not 
meet  and  respond  to  us  there?  If  I  speak  and  God 
hears,  if  I  cry  and  God  answers:  if  in  any  sense,  and 
to  any  extent,  there  is  spiritual  interrelation  and  inter- 
communication, then  there  is  real  transcendence,  an 
objective  correspondence  between  God  and  us,  each  in 


74  The  Reason  of  Life 

that  respect  outside  the  one  of  the  other.  And  nothing 
short  of  this  is  really  religion,  or  is  what  will  fill  and 
satisfy  the  human  need  and  demand  for  religion. 

How  was  mortal  man  to  enter  into  and  share  the  life, 
the  personal  life,  of  God?  We  are  speaking  no  longer 
now  of  natural  life,  we  have  passed  out  of  the  realm  of 
flesh  into  that  of  spirit:  "The  kingdom  of  God  is  not 
meat  and  drink,"  it  is  holiness,  and  righteousness, 
and  eternal  life,  in  the  Holy  Ghost.  And  what  is  the 
life  of  spirit,  as  such?  What  are  the  functions  and 
activities  within  us,  in  which  the  life  of  spirit  consists 
and  manifests  itself?  We  can  know  them  only  under 
the  personal  forms  of  intelligence,  affection,  will,  and 
voluntary  action.  If  religion  is  not  in  these,  it  is 
nowhere  for  us,  for  these  cover  the  whole  ground  of 
personal  life.  To  know  God,  to  need,  desire,  and  love 
God,  to  will  and  do  or  obey  God,  to  be,  so  far  as  we 
may,  what  God  is,  to  have  God  personally  in  ourselves, 
and  to  find  ourselves  only  and  wholly  in  Him  —  in 
what  other  terms  than  these  can  we  express  or  describe 
our  participation  in  God? 

If  this  be  the  sole  language  or  life  of  our  finite  spirits, 
as  children  of  God,  then  the  beginning  and  middle  and 
end  of  all  living  relation  to  the  life  of  God  is  that  we 
shall  know  enough  of  it  to  enter  into  it  and  have  part 
in  it.  Without  knowledge  there  can  be  no  desire  or 
will  or  action,  for  there  would  be  no  object  of  these. 
Once,  on  the  other  hand,  we  know  what  God  has  shown 
us  and  given  us  in  Jesus  Christ,  once  we  understand 
what  Christ  means  and  is  to  us  —  the  end  and  object, 


Grace  to  Become  Sons  75 

the  fulness  and  satisfaction  of  all  of  spirit  that  we  are 
or  that  is  in  us  —  then  we  see  that,  apart  from  the 
divine  revelation  and  gift  of  Him,  we  were  in  utter  and 
hopeless  darkness. 

Now  we  see  in  Him  the  power  of  God  indeed  unto 
salvation  —  but  the  power  of  God  acting  how  ?  Why, 
through  the  knowledge,  love  and  desire,  will,  and 
actual  exercise  and  activity  on  our  part,  of  everything 
that  is  in  the  truest  and  highest  sense  salvation.  To 
know,  love,  desire,  will,  and  serve  God  is  salvation: 
it  is  His  life,  Himself,  living  in  us.  We  see  this  in 
Christ,  we  know  it  in  Him,  we  love  and  desire  it  in 
Him — and  through  all  these  we  have  and  share  it  with 
Him.  We  see,  know,  and  share  with  Him  —  what? 
The  death  in  and  to  ourselves,  the  life  in  and  to  God. 
As  by  the  birth  and  action  of  our  own  reasons  and  free 
wills  we  pass  from  animal  into  man,  so  by  the  new  birth 
from  above  of  the  Incarnate  Word  and  Spirit  and 
Will  of  Jesus  Christ  in  us,  we  pass  from  human  to 
divine  —  up  through  the  reason  and  will  of  incomplete, 
and  imperfect,  and  sinful  self  into  the  Eternal  Reason 
and  Will  that  is,  of  right,  all  in  all. 


VII 
THE  PROCESS  OF  LIFE  SPIRITUAL 

CHRISTIANITY  may  be  viewed  under  a  variety  of 
aspects,  and  expressed  in  various  terms,  but  it  is  most 
exactly  described  as  a  life.  More  exactly  still  is  it 
described  by  our  Lord  Himself,  not  as  a  life,  as  though 
one  out  of  many,  but  as  simply  or  absolutely  Life,  or 
by  St.  John  as  The  Life:  for  the  life  we  are  speaking 
of  is  but  one  life  and  one  thing.  It  cannot  be  properly 
described  as  a  theory  or  scheme,  or  even  a  doctrine, 
of  life;  in  direct  contrast  to  and  contradistinction  from 
all  these,  it  is  the  fact  of  life,  the  life  itself,  about  which 
theories  are  mere  speculation,  and  doctrines  but  ex- 
planations and  instructions.  It  is  not  an  ideal  of  life, 
as  being  even  the  truest  conception  and  embodying 
the  most  perfect  standard  of  life.  It  is  contradis- 
tinguished from  the  ideal,  as  being  the  actual  and  the 
real.  Neither  can  Christianity  be  properly  described 
as  an  ethical  or  moral  system,  as  a  precept  or  law  of 
life.  While  incidentally  and  ail-importantly  it  is  this 
too,  as  it  is  all  the  rest,  yet  essentially  it  has  to  be  con- 
tradistinguished from  this  too,  as  well  as  from  all  the 
rest.  Christianity  is  not  a  theory  but  the  fact,  not  a 
doctrine  but  the  truth,  not  an  ideal  but  the  actual; 
and  so,  finally,  not  a  law  or  requirement  of  life,  but  the 

76 


The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual          77 

life  itself,  not  merely  required,  but  given,  received,  and 
lived. 

Christianity  is  of  course  the  life  of  Christ:  and  as 
such  it  is  necessarily  a  life  like  Christ's.  But,  speaking 
exactly,  it  is  distinctly  not  a  life  like  Christ's  in  us,  but 
the  life  of  Christ  in  us:  not  a  life  resembling  His,  but 
Himself  our  life.  Jesus  Christ  certainly  stands  to  us 
in  the  relation  of  example,  but  even  more  distinctly 
not  in  that  of  mere  example,  but  of  source,  and  power, 
and  of  content  and  matter  of  our  life.  He  is  our  life, 
nothing  whatever  merely  from  Him,  as  example,  or 
influence,  or  direction,  or  command.  "I  am  the  Life" 
is  not  the  word  He  spake  to  us,  it  is  the  Word  of  God 
which  He  is  to  us. 

"The  Word  of  Life"  — God  Himself,  Himself- 
imparting  —  speaks  to  us,  according  to  St.  John's 
account  of  it,  in  the  flesh:  not  through  one  sense  only, 
but  through  all,  through  every  natural  avenue  of  human 
perception,  knowledge,  or  experience:  "That  which 
was  from  the  beginning,  that  which  we  have  heard, 
that  which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  that  which  we 
beheld  and  our  hands  handled,  of  the  Word  of  Life 
(and  the  Life  was  manifested,  and  we  have  seen,  and 
bear  witness,  and  declare  unto  you  the  Life,  the  eternal 
Life,  which  was  with  the  Father,  and  was  manifested 
unto  us)."  So  this,  then,  is  the  witness,  the  witness 
not  alone  of  those  who  saw  Him  with  eyes,  and  heard 
Him  with  ears,  and  handled  Him  with  hands  of  flesh, 
but  the  witness  of  "every  one  who  belie veth  on  the 
Son  of  God"  (to  whom  God  gives  to  have  the  witness 


78  The  Reason  of  Life 

within  him):  namely,  "That  God  gave  unto  us  eternal 
life,  and  this  life  is  in  the  Son:  he  that  hath  the  Son 
hath  the  Life":  because  the  Son  of  God  is  the  Life. 
What  response  can  we  make  to  this,  but  to  say  with 
St.  Paul,  "I  live  no  longer,  Christ  lives  in  me!"  True 
faith  in  the  Son  of  God  is  the  death  of  "me,"  the  life 
of  God  in  me.  Our  life  is  "hidden  with  Christ  in  God; 
when  Christ  who  is  our  life  shall  appear,  then  shall  we 
also  appear  with  Him  in  glory." 

The  prime  point  in  all  this  is,  that  all  our  relation  to 
Jesus  Christ  is  of  that  immediate,  direct,  and  intimate 
character  which  is  possible  for  us  only  with  God  Him- 
self: "closer  is  He  than  hands  or  feet,  and  nearer  to  us 
than  breathing."  We  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being,  not  by  any  intermediary  between  God  and  us, 
but  only  by  and  in  God  Himself;  and  so  Jesus  Christ  is 
our  life,  not  through  anything  proceeding  from  Him 
at  a  distance  in  time  or  space,  but  through  His  own 
immediate  presence  and  action  in  us.  The  now,  and 
always,  and  everywhere  living  Christ  is  the  only  Christ 
of  Christianity  —  or,  rather,  is  the  Christ  of  the  one 
and  only  true  Christianity. 

We  have  seen  how  life  from  the  beginning,  from  the 
lowest  physical  or  animal  form  of  it,  through  rational 
and  spiritual,  up  at  last  to  eternal  or  divine  life,  is 
attributed  to  the  Logos  who  in  the  end  becomes  incar- 
nate in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  Life,  which  begins 
as  mere  "living  soul"  in  Adam,  becomes  in  Jesus 
Christ  "quickening,  or  life-giving,  spirit."  The  turning- 
point  in  the  process  may  be  described  more  in  detail 


The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual          79 

than  hitherto,  as  follows:  Life  becomes  rational  or 
human  at  the  moment  or  in  the  act  in  which  it  is  re- 
vealed to  itself,  when  itself  becomes  objective  and  an 
object  to  it.  This  reflex  or  sen*  consciousness  is  happily 
expressed  in  the  words  of  St.  John,  "and  the  life  was 
the  light  of  men."  The  distinction  between  lower 
beings  and  men,  which  we  call  reason,  marks  a  dif- 
ference, leaps  and  leaves  behind  a  chasm  between 
animal  and  man,  wider  than  we  conceive.  In  it  reason 
itself,  immanent  in  all  things,  ceases  to  be  mere  object 
and  becomes  subject,  ceases  in  nature  to  be  thing  and 
becomes  person.  There  is  reason  in  inanimate  things 
as  well  as  in  life  vegetable  and  animal,  but  it  is  no  reason 
of  theirs,  nor  to  them.  For  the  first  time,  to  men  is 
there  upon  earth  a  reason  visible  to  itself  in  their 
persons :  a  knowledge  and  understanding  of  the  reason 
and  meaning  and  purpose  and  end  of  things,  and  chiefly 
of  themselves.  "That  which  makes  manifest  is  light"; 
and  the  light  that  manifests  to  men  themselves,  and  all 
things,  and  God,  is  Reason;  which,  however,  is  rather 
an  eye  to  see  the  light  than  the  light  itself.  And  yet 
too,  what  but  light  can  see  light,  what  but  life  can 
know  life?  "If  the  eye  were  not  sunny  (of  the  nature 
of  the  sun),  it  could  not  see  the  sun."  We  can  know 
ourselves  because  we  are  potential  selves,  and  become 
actual  in  knowing  ourselves.  We  know  God  because 
we  have  somewhat  of  God  in  us,  because  we  are  of  God, 
and  are  sufficiently  of  His  nature  to  become  partakers 
of  Himself  and  of  His  life.  Only  to  him  that  hath  can 
be  given. 


80  The  Reason  of  Life 

There  is  an  intimate  and  necessary  connection 
between  human  self-consciousness  and  self-determina- 
tion or  freedom:  neither  could  be  by  itself,  or  without 
the  other.  It  is  in  the  gradual  and  growing  exercise 
of  personal  independence,  in  the  equal  possibility  of 
opposite  activities,  in  the  fact  of  choice  and  the  moral 
distinction  we  make  in  acts,  that  the  selves  in  us  emerge 
of  which  we  become  conscious.  It  is  in  the  discovery 
through  experience  of  law,  in  the  fact  of  obedience  or 
disobedience  to  it  and  the  consequences  that  ensue, 
that  we  come  to  know  ourselves  and  to  understand  the 
reason  and  meaning  of  things.  If  all  law  —  in  that 
case  improperly  so  called,  since  both  law  and  obedience 
or  disobedience  are  correlatives  of  freedom  —  were 
simply  immanent  necessity,  if  we  were  moved  without 
reason  or  by  a  reason  in  no  sense  our  own,  we  should 
neither  know  reason  nor  be  conscious  of  selves  which 
we  call  our  own. 

Reason,  however  it  comes  —  whether  or  no  only  in 
the  consciousness  and  exercise  of  personal  freedom  — 
could  never  of  itself  take  us  beyond  ourselves  and  the 
world  of  sense.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  could  not,  from 
the  knowledge  we  have  of  ourselves  and  derived  from 
sense-experience,  draw  inferences  and  build  up  specula- 
tions as  to  matters  without  us  and  beyond  us.  Reason 
of  itself  may  thus  lead  us  to  infer,  and  may  successfully 
justify  its  inference  of,  such  a  fact  or  truth  as  God,  and 
may  suggest  true  speculations  as  to  His  being  and 
nature:  I  am  not  denying  the  possibility  or  rationality 
of  a  purely  natural  or  innate  religion.  On  the  contrary, 


The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual          81 

if  man  is  naturally  constituted  for  religion,  for  knowl- 
edge and  life  of  God  —  although  I  hold  that  he  will 
never  come  to  these  by  purely  immanent  process 
within  himself,  that  he  will  never  meet  God  by  acts 
transcending  self  and  sense-experience  unless  God  also 
meet  Him  from  without  these,  that  however  he  may, 
prior  to  consciousness  and  freedom,  be  potentially 
child  of  God,  he  can  never  become  actually  son  of  God 
except  as,  through  consciousness  and  freedom,  God 
personally  communicates  and  imparts  Himself  and 
His  life  to  him  —  yet,  as  necessary  precondition  of  all 
this,  there  must  and  will  be  in  the  purely  natural  man 
himself  instincts  and  impulses  tending  Godward. 
Reason  may  thus  teach  us,  and  teach  us  truly,  many 
things  about  God  —  what  St.  Paul  calls  the  "invisible 
things  of  Him,"  which  "from  the  creation  of  the  world 
are  clearly  seen,  being  perceived  through  the  things 
that  are  made."  Reason,  I  say,  may  truly  reveal  to 
us  these  things  of  God,  but  it  cannot  possibly  give  us 
God.  Nothing  can  give  us  God  but  only  God  Himself, 
God  hi  some  mode  of  personal  or  Self  communication 
and  impartation,  God  speaking  to  us  and  to  Whom 
we  may  speak. 

A  Person  can  give  Himself  only  to  persons,  because 
he  can  be  met  and  received  only  by  persons.  A  Person 
cannot  give  himself,  as  such,  immanently,  but  only 
transcendently.  A  father  can  give  his  nature  and 
many  things  pertaining  to  himself  to  his  son,  by  genera- 
tion or  immanent  transmission;  himself  he  can  give 
to  him  only  by  transcendent,  objective,  personal  self- 
7 


82  The  Reason  of  Life 

presentation,  expression,  and  impartation.  The  per- 
sonal is  only  between  persons,  from  without  to  within. 

The  spiritual  is  something  more  than  and  beyond  the 
natural,  though  it  wholly  presupposes  and  includes  it. 
Man  is  in  a  double  sense  a  spiritual  being.  First,  he 
is  by  nature  finite  spirit:  nothing  but  spirit  can  com- 
municate with  or  can  be  communicated  with  by  Spirit. 
To  say  that  we  are  made  for  God,  for  union  and  com- 
munion, or  for  unity  with  God,  means  that  we  are  of 
like  nature  with  God,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  that 
union  or  unity  with  Him.  But  to  be  constituted  for 
and  capable  of  personal  relation  and  unity  with  God  is 
not  in  itself  to  be  in  that  unity  or  relation.  That  God 
has  given  us  much  in  nature  in  common  with  Himself, 
in  order  that  He  might  then  in  that  community  of 
nature  give  us  Himself,  that  the  knowledge  of  Him 
might  be  our  life  and  the  service  of  Him  our  freedom, 
is  not  yet  to  have  given  us  Himself,  or  life,  or  freedom. 
The  endowment  for  these  is  not  these.  Just  as  there 
is  a  difference  between  being  naturally  or  potentially 
rational  beings  or  moral  beings  and  being  actually  and 
really  rational  or  moral,  so  there  is  no  less  difference 
between  being  naturally  spiritual  beings,  or  beings 
made  for  spirituality,  and  being  spiritual  in  act  and 
in  fact. 

Jesus  Christ  spoke  much  of  knowing  the  Father,  and 
spoke  of  it,  not  only  of  Himself,  but  for  us.  We  were 
to  know  God  as  He  knew  Him,  for  life;  to  serve  God 
as  He  served  Him,  for  freedom;  and,  in  a  word,  to  be 
to  God  what  He  was  to  God.  Now  how  did  our  human 


The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual          83 

Lord  know  and  serve  God,  and  what  was  He  to  God? 
He  knew  Him  as  Father,  He  served  Him  as  Son,  by 
simply  being  as  truly  Son  to  God  as  God  was  Father  to 
Him:  Son  not  merely  by  nature,  whether  human  or 
divine,  but  Son  in  act  and  in  fact,  Son  by  one  spirit 
with  the  Father,  as  well  as  by  one  nature  with  the 
Father.  It  is  a  general  or  universal  truth,  that  no 
man  knoweth  the  father  but  the  son:  the  only  way  to 
know  the  father  is  to  be  the  son.  The  only  way  to  know 
God  is  to  know  Him  as  Father,  for  that  is  the  only 
actual  true  relation  we  can  bear  to  Him;  the  only  way 
we  can  know  Him  as  Father  is  to  know  Him  as  sons,  for 
we  can  only  know  Him  in  His  relation  to  us  by  realizing 
or  actualizing  our  relation  to  Him.  We  cannot  know 
God  out  of  true  and  real  relation  with  Him,  and  there 
is  only  one  real  relation  we  can  bear  to  Him  —  namely, 
being  His  sons,  not  only  by  bearing  His  nature,  but 
sharing  His  Spirit  and  living  His  life. 

Personal  or  transcendent  relation  between  God  and 
man  does  not  originate  or  begin  with  the  historical 
fact  of  our  Lord's  incarnation.  The  divine  Word  and 
the  divine  Spirit,  which  are  the  agents  of  all  such  rela- 
tion, are  described  in  the  Scriptures  as  having  been  in 
the  world  from  the  beginning.  But  they  could  be  in 
the  world  only  as  the  world  was  prepared  and  able  to 
receive  them,  and  they  were  present  in  each  stage  of 
the  world  in  accordance  with  the  stage.  Abraham, 
we  are  told,  was  the  friend  of  God :  and  he  lives  still  as 
permanent  exponent  of  the  faith  by  which  God  is  said 
to  be  known.  Did  Abraham  indeed  know  God  through 


84  The  Reason  of  Life 

faith:  then  it  is  possible  for  men  through  faith  to  know 
God.  The  extent  or  exactness  or  adequacy  of  the 
knowledge  does  not  enter  into  the  question.  An  infant 
begins  to  know  its  mother  from  its  birth.  If  faith 
made  perfect,  as  in  Jesus  Christ,  becomes  knowledge, 
then  faith  even  in  part,  and  in  smallest  part,  is  partial 
knowledge.  There  have  been  those  in  the  world  whom 
the  world  has  called  prophets;  has  God  ever  truly 
uttered  Himself  through  prophets?  Then  it  is  possible 
for  men  to  hear  God,  and  to  be  real  witnesses  and  mes- 
sengers for  Him  to  the  world.  Was  God  actually  with 
and  in  these  men  in  the  sense  and  in  the  way  in  which 
they  represented  Him  to  the  world?  It  does  not  follow 
from  God's  being  with  or  in  them  at  all  that  He  must 
have  been  with  and  in  them  completely  or  infallibly. 
The  mother  is  just  as  certainly  and  actually  in  the  child, 
and  with  it  objectively  or  from  without,  from  the  day 
of  its  birth  as  in  its  maturity.  The  fact  and  reality  of 
religion  depends  upon  the  possibility  and  the  actuality 
of  a  transcendent,  objective,  free,  personal  relation 
between  God  and  ourselves.  God  has  given  us  a 
consciousness  and  a  relative  independence  of  Himself 
which  are  designed  to  enable  us,  and  which  do  actually 
enable  us,  to  know  Him  personally  and  to  serve  Him 
freely.  The  end  and  essence  of  religion  is  so  to  know, 
to  love,  and  to  serve  Him,  which  we  do  only  by  realizing 
Him  as  our  Father  and  ourselves  as  His  children,  by 
being  ourselves  what  He  is,  doing  as  He  does,  and  so 
sharing  His  life,  and  being  partakers  of  His  goodness, 
which  is  His  good. 


The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual          85 

"  God  who  in  divers  measures  and  in  divers  manners 
had  spoken  to  the  world  by  prophets,  has  spoken  to  us 
in  full  measure  and  in  perfect  manner  in  His  Son." 
The  turn  of  expression  in  which  this  truth  is  stated 
emphasizes  the  fact  that  God  has  spoken,  not  merely 
in  the  person  of  His  Son,  but  in  the  fact  and  significance 
of  His  sonship.  All  that  in  part  Abraham  knew  through 
faith,  or  that  had  been  told  through  prophecy,  has  been 
fully  manifested  and  communicated  in  the  Son  of 
Man  who  is  also  Son  of  God.  We  know  the  Father 
in  the  Son:  we  know  the  Father  through  being  ourselves 
made  sons. 

Humanly  speaking  —  and  we  must  speak  humanly 
of  our  human  Lord :  in  His  humanity  His  consciousness 
was  a  human  consciousness  —  Jesus  Christ  knew  the 
Father  through  His  own  perfect  realizing  of  the  sonship 
to  God  potential  in  humanity  and  made  actual  in  Him- 
self. The  human  condition  of  a  perfect  sonship  to  God 
is  perfect  faith,  hope,  and  love,  perfect  obedience  or 
service  as  the  expression  of  these,  and,  through  and  hi 
all,  the  life  of  God  become  our  life.  Our  Lord  was 
perfect  Son,  and  so  perfectly  knew  the  Father,  through 
perfect  fulfilment  of  the  conditions  and  perfect  accom- 
plishment of  the  process  of  human  sonship.  As  man, 
Jesus  Christ  knew  Himself  only  in  terms  of  humanity. 
However  true  His  deity — and  it  was  infinitely  true,  for 
otherwise  His  humanity  was  impossible  —  it  was 
humanly  manifested,  and  cannot  be  known  or  expressed 
by  us  otherwise  than  in  what  He  was  as  man.  That 
He  was  the  divine  Man,  the  Man  from  heaven,  the 


86  The  Reason  of  Life 

Eternal  Word,  God  Self-expressed  in  humanity,  Son  of 
Man  because  humanity  itself  realized  and  revealed  — 
that  was  manifestation  enough  of  His  Godhead.  He 
came  to  be  known  in  man  and  as  man;  and  it  was 
neither  necessary  nor  to  the  purpose  that  He  should 
be  manifested  otherwise  than  as  man. 

Man  is  spiritual,  as  distinguished  from  rational,  not 
through  any  amount  or  truth  of  speculative  knowledge 
about  God,  but  only  through  personal  relation  and 
association  with  God  Himself.  No  immanence,  or 
community  or  affinity  of  mere  nature,  can  convey  or 
impart  that  which  comes  only  through  personal  asso- 
ciation, through  mutual  knowledge,  love,  service,  and 
interchange  of  offices  and  functions.  The  more  imme- 
diately important  thing  even  for  Jesus  Christ  Himself 
was  His  oneness  with  the  Father,  not  in  nature  alone, 
but  in  heart  and  mind  and  will  and  act;  and  the  immedi- 
ately important  thing  for  us  is  that  He  attained  that 
oneness  for  us  and  therefore  as  we  —  not  as  God  but 
as  man,  not  in  the  exercise  of  omniscience  and  omnipo- 
tence, but  in  the  experience  of  all  human  weakness  and 
temptation  and  through  the  sole  power  and  victory 
that  come  from  God  through  faith.  In  a  word,  our 
Lord  was  spiritual  man  through  all  the  processes  and 
achievements  of  spiritual  manhood. 

The  spirit  in  man  is  the  organ  and  faculty  of  the 
divine,  of  God  in  him.  It  is  through  it  that  we  are 
by  nature  related  and  akin  to  God,  constituted  for 
Him,  and  capable  of  union  and  unity  with  Him.  But 
the  human  spirit,  as  such  and  as  part  of  our  nature,  as 


The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual          87 

mere  potentiality  and  faculty,  does  not  make  us  spir- 
itual, any  more  than  eyes  of  themselves,  without  sun 
or  light,  give  us  sight.  They  are  both  media,  not 
sources:  spirituality,  as  sight,  comes  through  a  capacity 
within  us,  but  from  an  object  and  source  without  us. 
It  is  only  God's  Spirit  in  and  with  and  through  our 
spirit  that  makes  us  spiritual.  "Blessed  are  the  poor 
in  spirit."  The  first  blessedness  of  the  human  spirit 
is  the  fact  and  sense  of  its  own  poverty :  the  essence  of 
finite  spirit  and  the  condition  of  finite  spirituality  is 
poverty.  What  is  capacity  for  God,  but  want  of  Him, 
dependence  upon  Him,  utter  emptiness  and  nothingness 
without  Him?  "Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,  for 
theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  What  an  emptiness 
is  it  that  only  heaven  can  fill,  what  a  poverty  that 
wants  and  can  only  be  satisfied  with  God  Himself ! 

The  proper  and  only  necessary  functions  of  finite 
spirit  are  faith,  hope,  and  love:  given  these  in  purity 
and  integrity,  and  all  else  will  come,  for  spirituality  or 
for  blessedness.  Which  simply  means  that  if  the  condi- 
tions exist  in  us,  the  causes  and  operations  will  not  fail 
from  God.  Of  the  three,  faith,  hope,  and  love  —  love 
is  first  as  well  as  last :  no  one  has  real  faith  in,  or  hopes 
for,  what  he  does  not  think  about,  desire,  and  love: 
love,  if  only  yet  in  the  form  of  need  or  want,  determines 
the  objects  of  faith  and  hope.  But,  still  more,  love  is 
last;  for  it  requires  for  its  fulness  and  completion  both 
knowledge  and  possession,  and  these  for  us  are  to  be 
acquired  only  through  the  long  discipline  of  faith  and 
hope.  Faith  is  initial,  progressive,  partial  knowledge, 


88  The  Reason  of  Life 

as  hope  is  initial  and  partial  possession:  faith  complete 
is  the  only  knowledge,  as  hope  attained  and  satisfied 
is  the  only  possession,  of  which  our  finite  spirits  are 
capable.  Necessary  as  it  is  that  love  should  be  first 
and  last,  and  all  in  all — since  faith  and  hope  are  but 
expressions  and  energies  of  it  —  it  is  equally  necessary 
that  these  latter  should  have  their  place  and  time  in 
the  process  of  the  spiritual  life.  To  speak  of  knowing, 
or  loving,  or  living,  or  possessing  the  kingdom  of  God 
or  of  heaven,  all  at  once,  without  growth  or  process,  or 
any  otherwise  than  through  spiritual  evolution,  is 
impossible  and  inconceivable  for  finite  spirits.  God 
must  be  long  the  object  of  faith  and  hope  before  He 
can  be  the  possession  of  love  and  knowledge. 

It  is  vain  to  think  of  our  Lord's  spirituality  as  not 
having  passed  through  and  experienced  all  the  process 
of  a  human  faith,  hope,  and  love.  What  were  His 
temptations  but  the  testing,  proving,  and  making  in 
Him  of  those  essential  spiritual  graces  and  qualities? 
What  was  His  victory  but  the  complete  triumph  and 
crowning  in  His  person  of  faith,  hope,  and  love?  It 
is  true  that  our  Lord,  in  His  active  ministry  of  word  and 
work,  never  speaks  of  His  own  faith  and  hope,  while 
inculcating  them  continually  upon  us.  That  proves 
much,  but  what  is  it  that  it  proves?  He  never  speaks 
of  Himself  as  a  fighter,  but  He  does  speak  of  Himself 
as  the  victor,  as  having  conquered  in  the  great  battle 
of  life:  "I  have  overcome  the  world."  And  who  is 
the  victor  but  He  who  has  fought  and  won?  And  what 
is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world?  "It  is  even 


The  Process  of  Life  Spiritual  89 

our  Faith:  who  is  he  that  overcometh,  but  he  that 
believeth?"  To  believe  in  Jesus  Christ  is  essentially 
to  believe  in  the  irresistible  power  and  the  certain 
victory  of  faith,  hope,  and  love:  to  believe  in  Jesus 
Christ  as  the  Son  of  God  is  to  believe,  not  only  in  the 
eternal  fact  of  His  divine  Sonship,  but  no  less  in  the 
humanly  accomplished  act  and  fact  of  His  human  son- 
ship.  Nor  are  we  excluded  from  looking  behind  the 
scenes  upon  our  Lord's  hard-fought  fight  in  the  process 
of  its  waging  and  its  winning:  the  Wilderness,  the 
Garden,  and  the  Cross  teach  us  clearly  enough  that 
the  work  of  the  spirit,  the  strife  against  sin,  is  won  only 
by  resistance  unto  blood,  is  finished  only  in  death. 

I  spoke  of  life,  natural,  rational,  moral,  spiritual, 
eternal,  as  all  associated  with  the  evolutional  increation 
and  incarnation  of  the  Word  or  Son  of  God.  Eternal 
life  is  but  the  end  and  completion  of  one  continuous 
process.  Spiritual  life  is  eternal  life  begun  here  in 
faith  and  hope:  eternal  life  is  spiritual  completed  in 
faith  become  sight,  and  hope  become  possession  and 
fruition. 


VIII 
THE  SPIRITUAL  THROUGH  THE  NATURAL 

THERE  can  be  no  question  about  calling  Christian- 
ity a  life,  nor  about  calling  it  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul 
—  that  is  to  say,  in  the  personality  and  the  personal 
life  of  man.  Neither,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  New 
Testament  and  of  historical  faith,  can  there  be  any 
question  about  all  living  Christianity's  being  the  per- 
sonal life  of  the  living  and  present  Christ  —  not  any- 
thing merely  of  or  from  Him,  as  example,  or  influence, 
or  virtue,  or  even  grace,  or  spirit,  but  Himself  in  us. 
St.  Paul's  "I  live  not,  Christ  lives  in  me"  is  nothing 
more  than  the  implicit  attitude  of  the  New  Testament 
and  of  the  Church  whose  expression  it  was  and  is. 
"  In  Jesus  Christ,"  the  baptismal,  sacramental  place 
and  status  of  the  Christian  man,  the  ego  or  "I,"  the 
old  man,  the  self  of  sin  and  death,  is  dead,  and  He 
takes  its  place  and  lives  in  me.  That  is  possible  by 
virtue  of  what  Jesus  Christ  means  and  is  to  me.  Just 
as  the  brute  in  us  dies  into  the  rational,  free,  moral  man, 
so  the  natural  man  dies  into  the  spiritual.  By  the 
natural,  as  well  as  supernatural,  process  of  a  living 
faith,  hope,  and  love  in  Jesus  Christ,  not  alone  the 
virtue,  the  grace  and  power,  but  the  very  act  and  fact 

90 


The  Spiritual  Through  the  Natural      91 

of  His  death  to  sin  and  life  in  God,  are  communicated 
and  imparted  to  us.  The  old  self  dies,  and  a  new  Self 
which  is  more  truly  ourself  lives  in  its  stead.  The 
very  life  itself  of  this  new  Self  in  us  is  the  death  of  the 
old:  living  in  the  Spirit  and  so  walking  in  It,  we  cease 
to  fulfil  the  lusts  or  to  live  the  life  of  the  flesh.  As 
St.  Peter  expresses  it,  Jesus  Christ  has  "brought  us  to 
God"  through  having  been  "put  to  death  in  the  flesh, 
and  quickened,  or  made  alive,  in  the  spirit."  That 
act  becomes  ours  only  through  His  becoming  "we," 
taking  the  place  of  our  old  selves  and  becoming  the 
new  and  true  Self  in  us.  Jesus  Christ  may  no  doubt 
be  truly  called  the  Ideal  Man,  or  each  man's  Ideal 
Self,  but  He  is  infinitely  more  than  that:  an  ideal, 
merely  as  such,  is  an  abstraction;  Jesus  Christ  is  our 
actual  and  real  True  Self.  Man  in  the  mind  of  God,  in 
the  eternal  foreknowledge  and  forepurpose  of  God,  man 
"as  he  shall  be  when  his  becoming  shall  be  complete," 
is  not  less  but  more  man  than  in  his  inchoate  begin- 
nings and  in  his  incomplete  processes.  Our  Lord  is  not 
our  ideal  self,  He  is  our  eternal,  divine,  accomplished, 
assured,  and  perfect  Self.  Myself  apart  from  Him 
who  is  God  in  me,  the  everlasting  truth  and  meaning 
of  me,  my  eternal  life  and  self,  is  not  I.  Losing  self 
and  life  in  Him  I  find  them,  and  finding  them  apart 
from  Him  I  lose  them. 

There  are  two  truths  involved  in  this,  each  of  which 
is  more  than  liable  to  be  lost  in  part  or  in  whole.  In 
the  first  place,  Jesus  Christ  was  Himself  not  only  the 
Life  that  was  with  God,  and  was  God,  and  was  mani- 


92  The  Reason  of  Life 

fested  to  us;  He  was  also  that  life  made  ours  and 
manifested  in  us.  And  as  such,  it  was  in  Him,  in  His 
oneness  with  us,  precisely  the  same  in  kind  with  our 
life  now  in  Him.  For  Him  as  for  us,  in  our  commqn 
relation  with  the  Father,  was  the  "Not  I,  but  Thou," 
"Not  mine,  but  Thine;"  "I  can  do  nothing  of  myself." 
"Believest  thou  not  that  I  am  hi  the  Father,  and  the 
Father  in  me?  The  words  that  I  say  unto  you  I  speak 
not  from  myself:  but  the  Father  abiding  in  me  doeth 
His  works."  The  Son  can  do  nothing  "of  Himself," 
apart  from  His  "oneness  with  the  Father."  That 
truth,  in  all  its  human  signification  and  application, 
our  Lord  first  realized  for  us  in  His  own  humanity,  and 
so,  in  its  converse,  too,  that  "  in  oneness  with  the  Father 
the  Son  can  do  and  be  all  things,"  He  has  made  it 
forever  applicable  to  us  as  to  Himself.  In  Him  the 
perfection  of  faith  grew  into  sight  and  knowledge, 
the  consummation  of  hope  became  actual  possession; 
the  fulness  of  the  life  of  God  manifested  in  Him  was 
manifest  in  the  fulness  of  the  life  that  humanly  was 
Himself  and  His  own.  The  Son  of  God  became  man, 
and  the  man  that  He  became  and  was,  just  as  truly 
and  completely,  by  human  act  and  process,  incarnated 
the  Divine  Word  of  God  in  His  humanity,  as  the 
divine  and  eternal  Word  incarnated  Himself  in  Him. 
As  the  Deity  in  Him  became  human,  so  the  humanity 
in  Him  became  divine,  and  God  and  man  in  His  person 
were  One.  So  Jesus  Christ  was  the  Way  of  Life  in 
both  directions,  from  God  to  manward  and  from  man 
to  Godward:  from  God  to  us  He  was  Love,  Grace, 


The  Spiritual  Through  the  Natural      93 

Fellowship;  from  us  to  God  He  was  Faith,  Hope,  Love, 
eternal  Life. 

In  the  second  place,  not  only  was  Jesus  Christ  Him- 
self our  life  in  all  the  human  way  and  order  and  process 
of  it  —  through  faith  to  grace,  and  through  grace  to 
glory;  but  Jesus  Christ  is  Himself  our  life,  in  all 
our  own  progress  from  grace  to  grace,  and  finally  to 
glory.  We  progress  just  in  proportion  as  (1)  "it  is 
not  we  but  He  in  us,"  and  (2)  as  it  is  not  only  He 
but  we  too,  finding  and  realizing  ourselves  in  Him. 
The  living  and  present  Christ  operative  in  us  for  life 
now,  is  just  as  necessary  a  truth  as  the  dead  and  risen 
Christ  operating  for  us  for  life  long  ago. 

We  are  being,  not  too  often  or  too  much  if  we  take 
it  aright,  reminded  in  these  days  that  the  life  of  God 
or  of  Christ  in  us  does  not  mean  life  out  of  or  apart 
from  the  world,  but  rather  the  divinely  right  life  in  the 
world.  It  is  a  spiritual  life  because  it  is  essentially, 
not  only  a  life  of  the  Spirit,  but  a  spirit  of  life.  One, 
and  one  only,  spirit  characterizes  and  manifests  it. 
Hereby  know  we  that  we  are  of  God,  or  of  Christ,  and 
that  we  abide  in  Him  and  He  in  us  —  by  the  spirit 
that  He  has  given  us.  We  know  that  we  are  of  His 
Spirit,  by  the  spirit  that  we  ourselves  are  of.  That 
Spirit,  or  spirit,  we  know,  is  Love;  and  although  in  a 
sense  it  is  truly  expressed  in  the  words  "  Love  not 
the  world  nor  the  things  that  are  in  the  world," 
yet  it  is  not  in  the  sense  that  the  Object  or  objects 
of  our  love  are  wholly  in  another  world  and  not  in 
this.  We  do  not  perhaps  need  to  be  reminded  that 


94  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  contrary  is  the  truth,  but  how  and  how  much  it 
is  the  truth,  we  do  need  to  realize  much  better  than 
we  do.  The  same  Apostle  hi  the  same  epistle  in 
which  he  bids  us  not  to  love  the  world  and  the  things 
that  are  in  it,  teaches  us  that,  if  we  do  not  love  our 
brother  whom  we  can  see,  we  cannot  love  God  whom 
we  cannot  see:  which  embodies  a  great  principle.  If 
our  life  is  not  in  our  relations  here,  and  is  not  all  that 
it  ought  to  be  in  them,  it  can  neither  be  what  it  should 
be,  nor  be  at  all,  in  relations  elsewhere.  Life  is  corre- 
spondence with  environment  —  its  own,  actual  envi- 
ronment, and  not  another.  Life  here  may  fit  us  for 
another,  but  there  cannot  be  another  save  through 
this  and  as  the  sequel  and  result  of  this.  The  condi- 
tions and  circumstances  of  earth  are  precisely  those 
that  are  fitted  and  suited  to  develop  in  us  the  actions 
and  characters  that  make  up  our  lives.  In  bettering 
them,  and  making  them  what  they  ought  to  be,  we  are 
actually  making,  shaping,  and  determining  ourselves. 
To  make  this  world  all  that  it  ought  to  be,  to  see  that 
the  will  of  God  is  done  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven, 
to  convert  the  imperfect  and  the  wrong  in  all  of  our 
present  experience  into  the  perfect  and  the  right  of  a 
divine  standard  which  God  has  written  in  our  minds 
and  revealed  to  our  faith,  is  the  only  way  to  make 
heaven  for  ourselves,  or  to  achieve  that  kingdom  of 
God  which  is  the  goal  of  spiritual  desire.  We  com- 
plain that  the  world  is  made  what  it  is,  forgetting  that 
it  is  not  made  but  still  in  the  making,  and  that  it  is 
here  for  us  to  make  it  what  it  ought  to  be,  and  that  it 


Tfie  Spiritual  Through  the  Natural       95 

is  no  better  only  as  we  do  not  make  it  better.  If  the 
world  is  our  proper  environment,  in  reaction  with  which 
we  are  to  make  ourselves,  and  in  making  which  we  are 
to  make  ourselves,  how  else  are  we  to  expect  it  to  be 
better  than  by  our  making  it  so?  The  right  reaction 
of  life  upon  environment  and  of  environment  upon  life 
is  the  only  mean  or  hope  of  either. 

We  forget  how  much  of  the  good  that  Jesus  "  went 
about  doing  "  was  spent  upon  human  and  earthly  con- 
ditions, and  how  much  He  makes  the  final  judgment 
upon  us  to  turn  upon  the  same  way  and  kind  of  "  doing 
good."  We  are  to  find  Him,  as  we  are  to  find  God,  in 
all  that  needs  us,  and  especially  in  all  who  need  us, 
here.  To  go  away  from  this,  or  these,  in  search  of 
Him  elsewhere  or  by  Himself,  is  to  seek  Him  where,  for 
us  at  least,  He  is  not. 

In  our  fancied  spirituality,  we  are  perhaps  too  much 
inclined  to  seek  and  to  find  the  goodness  of  Jesus  in 
His  concern  for  the  spiritual  and  eternal  conditions  and 
welfare  of  men.  We  say  that  His  bodily  helps  and 
healings  are  only  temporary  object  lessons  and  parables 
of  His  permanent  mission  and  ministry  as  physician 
of  souls:  "That  ye  may  know  that  the  Son  of  man 
hath  power  on  earth  to  put  away  sin" —  then,  in  proof, 
He  put  away  sickness.  Of  course,  there  is  much  truth 
on  that  side,  but  on  the  other  side  too  there  is  this  to 
be  said:  Spiritual  life  is  not  something  that  can  be 
detached  and  separated  from  natural  or  even  from 
bodily  life.  The  senses,  the  appetites  and  passions, 
all  bodily  functions,  all  pleasures  and  pains,  are  part 


96  The  Reason  of  Life 

of  the  soul  that  needs  to  be  saved :  and  only  as  they  are 
spiritualized,  and  sanctified,  and  so  rationalized  and 
moralized,  is  the  soul  itself  saved,  of  which  they  are 
constituent  and  determining  elements.  We  are  not 
ourselves  apart  from  all  these  parts  of  ourselves;  and 
while  some  of  them  may  be  organs  and  functions  of 
life  only  as  life  is  here  and  now,  yet  even  these  in  their 
time  and  place  in  the  process  of  life  enter  not  slightly 
into  the  determination  of  what  shall  be  our  life  here- 
after. The  bodily  and  natural  life  is  therefore  to  be 
dealt  with  immediately  and  wisely  and  lovingly  in  the 
interest  of  the  spiritual  life  which  is  inseparably  con- 
nected with  it;  and  the  dealing  with  it  in  the  right 
spirit  and  the  right  way  is  a  very  large  part  of  our 
present  spirituality.  Patience,  endurance,  fortitude, 
courage,  temperance,  self-control,  self-discipline,  and 
general  physical  efficiency,  have  all  directly  much  to 
do  with  the  body,  and  are  all  none  the  less  spiritual 
virtues  and  graces.  Sympathy,  pity,  charity,  relief, 
and  help,  which  have  even  a  greater  part  in  our  spirit- 
ual activities,  have  scarcely  less  to  do  with  the  earthly 
and  bodily  conditions  of  others. 

Indeed,  the  spiritual  in  our  life  is  so  largely  the 
spirit  and  temper  in  and  with  which  we  deal  with  the 
temporal  and  the  natural,  that  in  the  life  of  Jesus  and 
of  the  New  Testament  the  danger  is  rather  that  of 
seeing  little  else  or  more  than  that  in  it.  There  is,  of 
course,  much  there  of  God  and  of  Heaven,  but  the  God 
and  heaven  of  our  Lord  and  His  Apostles  are  mostly 
in  the  world,  not  out  of  it.  The  concern  is  vastly  more 


The  Spiritual  Through  the  Natural      97 

with  the  now  and  here  than  with  the  elsewhere  and 
hereafter.  Faith  indeed  has  everything  to  do  with 
the  absent  and  the  future,  but  its  whole  function  and 
concern  with  them  is  to  make  them  present,  in  both 
time  and  space.  In  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament 
all  our  desire  and  effort  should  be,  not  to  go  to  heaven, 
but  rather  to  bring  heaven  to  us,  and  to  establish  it 
upon  earth:  the  kingdom  of  God  is  in  need  of  nothing 
with  Him  in  heaven;  what  it  needs  is  to  be  set  up 
among  us  upon  earth.  The  things  of  faith  are  indeed 
absent  and  future,  but  that  is  just  what  they  ought  not 
to  be,  or  to  continue  to  be;  we  shall  go  to  them  only 
through  bringing  them  to  us.  Our  Lord  "brought  us 
to  God"  through  dying  to  all  distance  or  separation 
from  Him,  and  living  in  nearness  and  oneness  with 
Him. 

The  important  question  for  us  then  is,  What  is  the 
life  of  God,  and  of  Christ,  here  and  now:  in  what 
spirit,  and  by  what  spirit,  shall  we  know  ourselves  in 
Him  and  Him  in  us?  If  we  concern  ourselves  aright 
with  the  present  and  with  earth,  we  may  trust  God  for 
the  future  and  its  heaven.  We  do  ourselves  make  and 
determine  our  future  and  our  heaven,  but  the  earth 
and  the  present  are  our  only  time  and  place  for  making 
them,  and  furnish  all  the  material  and  the  means  out 
of  which  and  by  which  they  are  made. 

If  we  would  study  yet  more  particularly  the  form 
which  the  life  of  God  and  of  Christ  assumes  among  us 
upon  earth,  and  the  spirit  that  actuates  and  character- 
izes it,  we  shall  find  no  more  exact  account  of  it  than 
8 


98  The  Reason  of  Life 

in  our  Lord's  own  words:  "Ye  know  the  rulers  of  the 
Gentiles  lord  it  over  them,  and  their  great  ones  exercise 
authority  over  them.  Not  so  shall  it  be  among  you: 
but  whosoever  would  be  great  among  you  let  him  be 
your  minister,  and  whosoever  would  be  first  among 
you  shall  be  your  servant:  even  as  the  Son  of  man 
came,  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and 
to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many."  With  regard  to 
the  last  clause,  we  may  safely  pass  by  all  controver- 
sial theology  by  agreeing  upon  only  so  much  of  common 
interpretation  as  the  following:  The  " giving "  of  our 
Lord's  life,  or  soul,  or  self  (for  all  these  three  are  in- 
cluded in  the  term  used),  was  certainly  the  cost  or 
price  of  our  redemption  by  Him,  no  matter  why  or 
how  it  was  by  that  effected.  It  was  that  act  of  perfect 
love,  service,  and  sacrifice  on  His  part  that  in  fact 
redeems  and  saves  humanity.  The  act  was  in  itself 
human  redemption,  salvation,  and  eternal  life:  for  in 
it,  humanity  in  His  person  conquered  sin,  death,  and 
hell,  put  all  enemies  under  its  feet,  and  is  seated  as 
victor  at  the  right  hand  of  God,  as  participant  in  His 
holiness,  righteousness,  and  eternal  life.  The  admix- 
ture of  imagery  or  figure  with  literal  fact  in  that  state- 
ment, in  no  wise  impairs  its  truth,  and  is  of  help  to  the 
imagination  in  conceiving  it.  This  supreme  act  of 
our  Head,  of  the  Leader  or  Captain  of  our  salvation, 
of  the  Author  and  Finisher  of  our  faith,  is  accepted  by 
God,  and  appropriated  by  us,  as  ours:  because  it  is 
ours  —  not  only  potentially  through  the  grace  of  God 
assured  to  us  in  Christ,  but  actually  upon  the  sole 


The  Spiritual  Through  the  Natural      99 

condition  of  our  faith's  taking  and  making  it  ours. 
Upon  the  details  and  methods  of  this  divine  salvation 
we  may  differ  indefinitely,  theoretically  or  specula- 
tively;  and  yet,  practically  and  substantially,  can  agree 
perfectly  in  knowing  ourselves  to  be  indeed  dead  unto 
sin  in  the  death,  and  alive  unto  God  in  the  life  of  our 
risen  Lord. 

It  is,  however,  the  spirit  before  and  behind  all  this, 
of  which  I  wish  to  speak  as  the  breath  and  principle 
of  the  life  of  Christ  in  us.  The  life  of  man,  as  the  life 
of  God,  is  essentially  and  necessarily  a  ministry  and  a 
service.  It  lives  hi  giving  itself,  and  ceases  to  live  in 
ceasing  to  give.  It  is  a  fundamental  fact  in  itself, 
independently  of  the  authority  upon  which  it  is  stated, 
that  "it  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive." 
Aristotle  says  substantially  what  our  Lord  says.  Re- 
ceiving, or  merely  having,  is  passivity;  using,  giving, 
spending,  are  activities;  and  life  and  blessedness  are 
acts  and  activities  —  energies  and  actualities,  not  mere 
states,  or  conditions,  or  potentialities.  The  Self  in  us 
is  at  its  best  and  highest  in  an  act  of  pure  love,  service, 
and  sacrifice.  "  Not  that  which  goeth  into  a  man  either 
defiles,  or  beautifies,  or  blesses  him,  but  only  that  which 
comes  forth  from  him:"  for  only  that  is  he,  which 
proceeds  from  himself. 

It  is  not  mere  giving,  of  course,  that  is  the  true 
expression  of  Christ,  but  giving  life,  soul,  self.  And 
there  is  no  either  true  giving  of  self,  or  true  self  or  life 
to  give,  that  is  not  Love.  If  God  can  define  Himself 
as  Love,  can  comprehend  and  express  all  that  He  is 


100  The  Reason  of  Life 

within  the  compass  of  those  four  letters  and  that  single 
syllable  —  it  is  not  too  much,  nor  too  little,  for  us  to 
say  that  all  true  life,  true  selfhood,  or  true  blessedness 
in  us  is  love.  It  is  not  enough,  in  describing  love  as 
the  essence  and  principle  of  life,  as  the  sole  principle 
of  all  true  and  real  life,  to  insist  upon  its  Tightness; 
we  must  assert,  above  and  beyond  that,  its  absolute 
and  sole  blessedness.  It  is  not  only  the  sum  and  sub- 
stance of  all  our  duty,  the  fulfilling  of  the  whole  law  of 
life;  it  is  also  our  highest  good  and  happiness.  The 
"right"  is  but  the  rule  or  law  of  the  "good,"  the  for- 
mulation and  expression  of  our  obligation  to  it.  The 
Good,  therefore,  as  an  end  is  higher  and  more  ultimate 
than  the  Right  as  a  way  or  means.  If  "goodness" 
itself,  which  is  the  activity  and  natural  expression  of 
Love,  and  is  the  principle  and  essence  of  Tightness  or 
duty,  is  "will  of  the  good,"  then  it  would  seem  that 
good,  as  the  end,  is  something  above  and  beyond  even 
goodness,  as  the  will  and  the  way.  What  then  is  the 
Good,  to  which  all  ways  lead  and  all  means  tend?  It 
cannot  be  conceived  or  expressed  otherwise  than  as  at 
once  the  perfection  and  the  blessedness  of  Life. 

If  life,  which  is  inseparable  and  indistinguishable 
from  its  movement,  its  exercise  and  activity,  its  use 
and  application,  were  not  in  itself  a  pleasure,  a  happi- 
ness, a  blessedness,  there  is  no  other  sense  in  which  it 
would  be  a  good.  Why  should  we  want  it,  for  ourselves 
or  for  others,  to  be  complete  or  perfect,  or  to  be  at  all, 
if  it  were  the  pleasure,  and  so  the  desire  and  the  will, 
of  no  one.  Our  individual  life  might  be  only  a  pain  to 


The  Spiritual  Through  the  Natural     101 

ourself ,  and  yet,  because  it  is  a  duty  or  a  good  to  others, 
or  the  will  or  law  of  God,  we  choose  to  continue  it.  In 
that  case,  not  only  has  the  pleasure,  the  desire,  or  the 
will  of  others  been  the  end  which  has  determined  our 
action,  but  that  end  has  determined  us  only  by  becom- 
ing our  own  dominant  pleasure,  desire,  and  will.  We 
cannot  escape  the  conclusion  that  pleasure,  happiness, 
blessedness,  is  not  only  the  actual  and  universal,  but  is 
the  proper  and  necessary  end  and  determinant  of  life. 
Our  freedom,  our  responsibility,  our  wisdom,  and  our 
salvation,  is  in  the  choice  of  our  pleasures,  in  the  quality 
and  material  of  our  happiness,  in  the  truth  and  purity 
of  our  blessedness.  In  choosing  God  and  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  we  have  made  the  wisest  and  best  possible 
choice,  but  we  have  not  chosen  God  because  He  is  our 
duty  alone,  but  because  He  is  our  highest  pleasure  or 
joy,  our  truest  happiness,  our  essential  life  and  blessed- 
ness. Or,  if  we  have  chosen  Him  from  duty,  then  we 
have  made  duty  our  dominant  pleasure,  desire,  and 
will,  or  happiness. 

Which  is  the  higher  and  the  ultimate,  Goodness 
or  Good  —  good,  which  is  personal  perfection  and 
blessedness,  or  goodness,  which  is  will  of  the  good 
to  others  and  to  all?  The  answer  is  that  they  are 
one  and  the  same,  and  neither  can  be  first  or  second. 
If  good  is  life,  and  life  is  love,  and  love  is  good- 
ness —  then  goodness,  and  love,  and  life  are  identical 
and  are  the  sole  and  the  only  good.  It  follows  that 
the  spiritual,  moral,  divine  end  and  aim  of  life  is  not 
reached  by  the  surrender  or  sacrifice  of  pleasure  or 


102  The  Reason  of  Life 

happiness,  in  their  true  sense,  to  duty.  What  we  need 
for  that  abundance  of  life  which  our  Lord  came  into 
the  world  to  bring  and  to  bestow,  is  not  to  deny  or 
mortify  pleasure  or  happiness,  but  to  raise  it  to  its 
highest  place  and  power.  We  do  this  when  we  learn 
that  the  highest  good  is  the  being  good,  and  that  to  be 
good  is  to  will  and  to  do  good.  The  true  goal  is  yet 
afar  off,  it  is  only  in  the  way  and  on  the  way  of  ultimate 
attainment,  so  long  as  it  is  to  us  only  the  object  of 
duty,  a  matter  only  of  law  and  obligation.  Loving, 
willing,  being  good,  are  attaining  perfection  with  us 
in  the  measure  in  which  they  are  ceasing  to  be  law  and 
becoming  spirit,  are  ceasing  to  be  duty  and  becom- 
ing a  pleasure  and  a  passion,  our  happiness  and  our 
blessedness. 

The  philosophy  of  all  this  is,  that  the  good  gift  of 
God  to  us  is  the  life  that  is  His  own.  If  life  is  a  good, 
its  good  is  to  be  found,  not  in  its  mere  potentiality  or 
possession,  but  in  its  use  and  exercise,  in  its  proper 
functions  and  energies  and  activities.  All  these  are 
given  in  the  actual  and  manifold  relations,  associations, 
and  interactions  of  human  life.  Of  all  these  there  is 
one  all-embracing,  all-constructive,  all-sufficient  spirit, 
and  principle,  and  law  —  the  spirit,  principle,  law  of 
love  and  goodness.  Love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  whole 
law  of  life  —  that  is,  only  in  it  is  life  fulfilled,  goodness 
attained,  and  good  secured. 


IX 
LOVE   THE   SEMINAL   PRINCIPLE   OF   LIFE 

CHRISTIANITY  is  not  a  life,  so  long  as  it  remains  only 
a  theory,  an  ideal,  or  a  sentiment,  or  all  these  to- 
gether. Life,  as  contradistinguished  from  all  these,  is 
the  one  reality,  and  it  exists  only  as  it  is  actual.  All 
that  is  merely  thought  or  felt  or  said  about  it  adds 
nothing  to  the  real  knowledge  of  it;  it  can  be  known 
only  by  being  lived.  To  "know"  God,  or  His  Son 
Jesus  Christ,  or  eternal  life,  in  the  New  Testament  is 
synonymous  with  being  in  actual  possession  of,  in 
living  relation  and  association  with  them.  "If  we 
say  that  we  know  Him,  or  that  we  have  fellowship 
with  Him,  and  are  still  walking  in  darkness,  we  lie 
and  do  not  the  truth."  We  must  be  "  born  from 
above  "  in  order  to  be  able  to  "  see  "  the  Kingdom  of 
God;  and  birth  is  an  act  or  incident  of  life,  not  of 
thought  or  reasoning  or  feeling;  however  it  may  be 
necessarily  connected  with  all  these  also,  it  is  insep- 
arable from  its  distinctive  movement  and  action  and 
actuality. 

The  practical  question  then  is,  How  shall  we  make 
our  Christianity  the  life,  the  activity  or  actuality, 
which  alone  Christianity  really  is?  We  shall  not  have 
it  by  merely  telling  or  being  told  it;  but,  having  it,  we 

103 


104  The  Reason  of  Life 

may  have  it  better  by  a  clearer  apprehension  and  ex- 
pression of  what  it  is.  So  let  us  reflect  —  and  try  not 
merely  to  speculate  —  a  little  further  upon  what  the 
life  of  Christ  is  in  this  world. 

The  first  difficulty  in  the  practical  understanding  of 
the  Christian  life  is  found  in  the  ambiguity  of  the  one 
word  which  ought  of  itself  perfectly  to  express  it  — 
and  does  not,  because  it  is  itself  so  profaned  and  de- 
graded—  the  word  Love.  Like  every  other  element 
or  principle  of  our  human  life,  love  has  had  its  evolution, 
and  carries  the  marks  of  its  lower  stages.  It  originated 
and  is  still  rooted  in  sensuous  or  bodily  instinct  and 
appetite  or  passion.  Its  elemental  function  is  repro- 
duction and  propagation;  its  first  form  is  sexual  union. 
Sexual  love  is  primitive  or  original  love,  and  the  source 
of  all  other.  Directly  out  of  it,  and  in  the  genetic  order 
of  organic  growth,  proceeds  every  other  form  of  human 
love,  parental,  filial,  fraternal,  domestic,  social,  political, 
racial,  humanitarian.  Marital  affection,  relation,  asso- 
ciation, is  the  source,  not  only  of  all  life,  but  of  all  the 
mutual  offices  and  functions,  all  the  reciprocal  rights 
and  duties,  among  men. 

If  it  should  be  asked,  What  on  the  whole  and  in  the 
end  is  the  reason  and  meaning,  the  final  and  determining 
ground  and  cause  of  the  sexual  or  marital  relation,  no 
one  would  venture  to  answer,  that  it  is  for  bodily  or 
sensuous  gratification.  And  yet  it  is  necessary  to 
mention  that:  not  merely  because  so  many  do  make  it 
the  end,  but  because  the  practical  and  necessary  reason 
for  even  that  lowest  feature  of  sexual  love  is  plain 


Love  the  Seminal  Principle  of  Life    105 

enough:  there  must  be  the  elemental  physical  impulse 
and  impulsion  strong  enough  and  universal  enough  to 
ensure  always  and  everywhere  the  ends  to  be  subserved. 

Many  more  will  say,  and  yet  it  is  manifestly  still  not 
enough  to  say,  that  the  end  of  the  sexual  relation  is 
the  propagation  of  the  species.  The  species  is  indeed 
propagated  through  the  sexual  relation:  we  are  not, 
however,  considering  either  the  fact  or  the  necessity 
of  propagation,  but  only  the  reason  and  propriety  of 
that  particular  way  of  it.  No  doubt  some  self-working 
and  effective  process  of  propagation  was  necessary,  but 
why  the  method  of  sexual  differentiation,  complementa- 
tion, and  union?  It  is  impossible  to  say  that  reproduc- 
tion might  not  have  been  more  simply  effected  than 
through  the  device  of  the  conjunction  and  cooperation 
of  man  and  woman.  That  it  is  by  that  shows,  in  its 
highest  form  of  human  marriage,  conclusive  evidence 
that  the  natural  institution  has  ends  and  uses  that  far 
transcend  those  of  mere  propagation. 

Indeed,  why  should  propagation  be  so  carefully 
ensured,  be  so  much  of  an  end?  The  answer  can  be 
found  only  in  the  fact  that  there  are,  in  the  life  con- 
served by  it,  values  and  uses  far  transcending  those  of 
mere  being,  or  being  propagated;  and  we  can  begin  to 
see  that  the  manner  of  propagation  has  meaning  and 
application  for  these  higher  uses  and  goods,  and  is 
determined  and  fitted  to  them  as  well.  Propagation 
is  an  end,  not  in  itself,  but  only  as  a  condition  of  higher 
ends  which  are  necessary  to  explain  it.  We  have 
always  to  carry  along  with  us  the  principle,  that  final 


106  The  Reason  of  Life 

cause  and  sufficient  reason  reveal  themselves  only  in 
the  consummation  and  completion  of  processes  and 
evolutions.  Very  much  of  all  of  nature  that  went 
before  him  becomes  explicable  only  in  man;  and  very 
much  in  man  himself,  as  well  as  in  all  antecedent  nature, 
becomes  explicable  only  as  we  come  to  see  and  know 
"  Him  as  He  is,"  who,  as  first  and  final  cause  of  our 
being,  carries  in  Him  all  the  reason  and  meaning,  all 
the  truth  and  purpose,  of  ourselves. 

It  becomes  already  very  plain  that  in  the  institution 
of  male  and  female,  in  all  that  they  are  for  each  other 
in  the  entire  range  of  their  complex  being,  in  the  close 
relations  and  intimacies  and  mutual  dependences  that 
necessarily  exist  between  them,  in  the  propagation  and 
nurture  of  offspring,  and  the  formation  and  conduct 
of  families,  the  most  perfect  foundation  is  laid  and  the 
completest  provision  made  for  that  social  state  and 
environment  in  whose  relations  and  associations  human 
life  at  its  highest  was  to  be  spent  and  to  find  itself.  In 
a  word,  the  ultimate  reason  and  use  of  sex,  of  male  and 
female,  man  and  woman,  and  the  close  conjunction 
between  them,  is  found  in  the  principle  of  rational  and 
free  social  union  and  unity.  "  Man  is  a  social  being," 
is  the  first  word  of  the  science  or  philosophy  of  human 
life. 

"To  be"  means  to  be  in  relation:  nothing  exists 
except  in  definite  place  with  respect  to  every  other 
thing;  that  which  is  nowhere  is  not  at  all.  And  every- 
thing in  the  world  is  in  definite  relation,  not  only  of 
place,  but  of  interaction,  more  or  less  immediate  or 


Love  the  Seminal  Principle  of  Life    107 

remote,  with  everything  else  in  the  world.  This  vital 
and  active  interrelation  is  the  very  essence  and  principle 
of  being.  What  is  true  of  being  is  truer  of  that  higher 
form  of  being  which  we  call  "  living "  —  and  truer  as 
life  is  higher  and  highest.  A  dog  may  be  a  dog  though 
it  has  not  seen  or  come  into  contact  with  another  dog; 
but  a  man  cannot  be  a  man  without  conscious  relation 
and  association  with  other  men.  Human  life  is  possible 
only  in  society:  the  individual  lives  only  in  the  common 
life,  and  is  only  as  he  enters  into  and  fulfils  its  natural 
relations,  shares  its  aims,  ideas,  and  sentiments,  takes 
part  in  the  division  of  its  necessary  labor,  and  con- 
tributes his  proportion  to  its  good  and  its  happiness. 

Unity  and  community  is  the  essence  and  condition 
of  life;  and  it  originates  in  the  union  and  communion 
of  man  and  woman  in  the  closest  of  bonds,  grows  into 
the  unity  of  the  family,  and  widens  from  that  into  the 
oneness  of  the  clan,  the  state,  the  nation,  and  humanity. 
It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  "Nature"  —  we  must 
express  it  in  terms  of  more  "wise  and  understanding 
action"  and  say  that  "God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all 
nations  of  men  for  to  dwell  upon  the  face  of  the  whole 
earth."  All  comes  from  one  common  parentage,  the 
union  of  the  man  and  the  woman  in  the  symbolic  garden 
of  the  world's  infancy.  The  woman  was  to  be  to  the 
man  "  a  help  meet  for  him,"  a  help-mate  to  him,  the 
partner,  not  only  of  his  sensuous  pleasure,  of  his  racial 
instinct,  of  his  useful  or  necessary  toil,  but  of  his  whole 
life,  in  its  highest  and  farthest  reaches  as  well  as  in  its 
lowest  and  most  elemental  commonplaces.  The  Chris- 


108  The  Reason  of  Life 

tian  law  and  ideal  of  marriage  is  as  much  part,  and 
highest  part,  of  nature's  institution  of  the  sex  relation, 
as  reason  and  freedom  were  part  of  nature's  original 
institution  of  man,  although  neither  was  visible  or 
was  present  in  the  first  beginnings,  but  has  arisen  only 
in  the  fulness  of  time  and  by  a  process  of  evolution. 

Who  will  claim  that  when  youthful  pleasure  ceases, 
and  domestic  utilities  have  come  to  an  end,  nothing 
more  remains  of  the  marriage  relation?  The  true  wife 
has  become  to  the  true  husband  that  nearest  and  dearest 
"alter  ego,"  in  whom  the  "ego"  finds  the  other  and 
better  half  of  itself.  Is  the  divine  help  provided  for  man 
not  "  meet "  and  competent  for  this  highest  service  and 
ministry?  Is  the  help-mate  to  be  a  mate  only  in  the 
lowest  and  not  also  in  the  highest  functions  of  life,  co- 
heir of  the  grace  of  eternal  life  as  well  as  sharer  of  the 
pains  and  toils  and  experiences  upon  the  way  to  it? 
All  a  man's  personal,  moral,  and  spiritual  selfhood 
comes  out  in  relation  and  association  and  correspond- 
ence with  other  selves,  in  mutual  knowledge  and  love 
and  cooperation;  and  the  true  intercourse  and  mutual 
complementing  of  the  sexes,  for  which  the  difference 
was  instituted,  is  the  root  and  source  and  fountain  of 
all  that  is  most  beautiful  and  elevating  and  noble,  as 
well  as  of  all  that  is  most  natural  and  elemental,  in 
human  life.  When  the  marriage  relation  shall  have 
been  degraded  into  a  consent  for  temporary  pleasure 
and  convenience,  human  life,  in  all  that  is  worth  propa- 
gating, will  have  withered  up  from  the  root. 

Love  is  neither  all  itself  nor  truly  itself  until  it  has, 


Love  the  Seminal  Principle  of  Life    109 

not  necessarily  outgrown  nor  lost,  but  certainly  tran- 
scended, its  sensuous  origin  and  its  selfish  gratifica- 
tions. True  love,  as  such  and  as  separate  from  the 
alloy  which  takes  its  name  and  is  its  contradictory,  is 
of  and  for  "the  other,"  above  all  supremely  wills  the 
good  of  the  other.  "Herein  is  love,  that  a  man  lay 
down  his  life  for  his  friend."  In  most  human  associa- 
tions and  relationships  it  is  the  law  of  nature  that  the 
lower  elements  of  mere  earthly  appetite  and  utility,  as 
temporary  means  and  stages,  shall  gradually  fade  and 
die  out  into  the  abiding  unities  and  realities  of  real  love 
and  true  life,  the  affinities  and  associations  of  souls 
and  selves,  and  not  merely  of  bodies  and  business. 

The  sexual  relation,  then,  is  for  love  and  life,  in  the 
highest  reaches  and  meaning  of  each  —  for  the  produc- 
tion and  nurture  of  social  relations,  functions,  and 
affections,  for  the  completest  development  and  the 
highest  activities  and  satisfactions  of  the  entire  social 
nature.  Love  is  nearest  perfection,  and  the  most 
effectually  perfects  and  blesses  the  life,  the  soul,  the 
self,  when  it  is  least  for  self  and  most  for  its  object  — 
for  God  as  its  supreme  Object,  and  for  the  manifold 
"  others "  in  whom  God  gives  Himself  to  be  loved  and 
served,  in  loving  and  serving  whom  we  most  effectually 
love  and  serve  Him. 

The  Christian  measure  and  standard  of  love  is  that 
we  love  others  as  we  love  ourselves;  against  which  there 
is  nothing  to  be  said,  if  we  take  in  its  whole  meaning. 
It  lowers  love  to  create  or  assume  a  schism  and  a  dif- 
ference between  the  self-love  which  is  proper  and  neces- 


110  The  Reason  of  Life 

sary  to  us  and  other-love.  It  is  no  real  self-denial  or 
abnegation  to  love  others  as  ourselves,  when  in  doing 
so  we  are  most  truly  and  effectively  loving  ourselves 
as  well  as  others.  Our  true  and  whole  self  is  not  in 
ourself  alone  and  can  never  be  found  there.  It  is  to 
be  found  only  in  all  our  proper  relations  with  all  others 
and  all  else.  And  the  All  in  all  is  God:  we  can  find 
neither  self  nor  God  save  in  all.  God,  our  neighbor, 
and  our  self  are  all  One  in  the  all-embracing  unity  of 
Love,  and  neither  can  be  loved  apart  from  the  others. 
So  love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  whole  law  of  life. 

Love  means  willing  the  good  —  such  willing  as 
includes  doing  and  being.  Now  the  good,  in  all  its 
stages  of  pleasure,  happiness,  blessedness,  is  something 
which  can  originally  and  primarily  be  known  only  in 
ourselves  and  as  our  own.  Love  or  goodness,  which 
is  the  essence  and  principle  and  source  of  all  other- 
regarding,  all  duty  or  righteousness,  all  law  and  obliga- 
tion, all  morality,  all  justice,  generosity,  or  benevolence 
—  goodness,  I  repeat,  which  is  pure  altruism,  is  willing 
to  others  that  which  we  have  found  and  can  know  as 
good  only  in  ourselves.  The  feeling,  the  experience, 
the  consciousness  of  worth  and  value,  the  help  and 
advantage,  the  pleasure,  happiness,  blessedness,  which 
we  could  never  have  known  in  others,  or  outside  the 
field  of  our  own  sensibility  and  cognition,  we  find  a 
thousand-fold  multiplied  by  being  shared  with  others 
and  as  the  property  of  all.  Thus  good,  which  is  pri- 
marily egoistic,  or  one's  own,  finds  itself  ultimately 
and  completely  only  in  goodness,  which  is  purely  altru- 


Love  the  Seminal  Principle  of  Life    111 

istic,  is  found  only  out  of  oneself  in  others.  Goodness 
at  last  is  the  only  real  or  true  good,  because  it  combines 
and  unifies  all  the  good  of  self  with  all  the  good  of  others : 
the  good  of  self,  because  in  sharing  or  imparting  one's 
good,  in  the  act  of  love,  service,  and  sacrifice,  one  attains 
that  purest  and  highest  exercise  and  experience  of  finite 
selfhood,  which  is  the  only  definition  of  blessedness; 
and  yet  again,  because  in  thus  making  all  our  good 
the  good  of  others,  we  have  made  the  good  of  all 
others  our  own. 

In  willing  the  good  of  others,  and  indeed  of  ourselves, 
we  are  liable  to  no  less  fatal  mistakes  as  to  what  is 
good  or  what  good  is,  than  we  are  as  to  what  love  is. 
The  ambiguity  of  both  terms  runs  into  direct  contra- 
dictions of  the  things  intended  by  them.  So-called 
love  may  be  the  grossest  and  most  brutal  selfishness 
and  cruelty;  and  good  or  goodness,  so-called,  may  be, 
and  too  often  is,  the  worst  of  evils.  Love,  in  order  to 
be  kept  true  to  itself  and  its  name,  is  in  need  of  a  very 
high  science  or  philosophy  of  good.  How  much  of  the 
well-meant  philanthropy  and  charity  of  the  past,  with 
truer  conceptions  of  human  life  and  rights,  has  come 
to  be  regarded  as  curse  rather  than  blessing  —  too 
often  the  condescension  of  the  proud  privileged  to  the 
humble  defrauded.  How  late  and  how  true  the  cry 
of  the  poor,  What  we  want  and  ask,  is  not  pity  and 
charity,  but  justice  and  opportunity. 

What  a  height  and  depth  of  thought  our  Saviour 
opens  up  to  us  in  the  suggestion  or  reminder,  that  a  man 
may  gain  the  whole  world,  and  lose  himself,  his  soul, 


112  The  Reason  of  Life 

all  his  true  life!  or,  on  the  contrary,  may  lose  the 
whole  world  and  therein  —  possibly  thereby  —  win 
himself,  his  soul,  his  life.  In  the  true  universal  sense, 
not  in  the  narrow,  false,  selfish  sense,  a  man's  good  is 
himself,  his  own  part,  the  thing  that  is  appointed  him, 
and  not  another,  to  be  and  to  do  in  the  world:  "The 
work  the  Father  hath  given  me  to  accomplish,  even 
the  work  that  I  do,  that  beareth  witness  of  me,  that 
the  Father  hath  sent  me." 

Such  commonplaces  as,  that  mere  natural  goods 
must  be  subordinated  to  moral  and  spiritual,  that  we 
must  not  serve  a  man's  pleasure  or  ease  or  material 
interests,  his  selfishness,  at  the  expense  or  to  the  detri- 
ment of  himself,  have  of  course  their  truth  and  use. 
The  trouble  and  difficulty,  to  the  point  of  impossibility, 
is  to  know  all  a  man's  good,  and  still  more,  how  always 
to  serve  him  to  the  true  end  of  it.  We  can  at  least 
have  the  consistent  and  habitual  true  will  of  it  in  our 
own  minds  and  hearts;  so,  to  the  extent  of  our  purpose, 
shall  we  be  living  for  the  common  good,  and  indirectly, 
by  the  happiest  indirection,  be  securing  our  own. 

At  the  point  where  we  now  are,  it  is  not  the  meaning 
of  either  love  or  good,  on  the  whole,  which  is  in  question, 
so  much  as  the  complex  details  of  the  ways  and  means 
to  them.  Good  is  the  fulness  of  real  life,  and,  second- 
arily, all  that  ministers  to  it.  Love  is  the  perfect  will 
of  the  good,  not  only  to  ourselves,  but  equally  to  all. 
The  question  is  not  whether  but  how  we  shall  love,  and 
not  what  good  is,  but,  in  the  complex  conditions  of 
human  life,  what  things  are  good.  Here  we  must  study 


Love  the  Seminal  Principle  of  Life    113 

God's  mind  and  methods  as  revealed  to  us  in  the  human 
life  of  Jesus  Christ;  for  His  ways  of  love  are  often  very 
different  from  ours,  and  the  means  and  instruments  of 
good  which  He  employs  are  not  seldom  received  and 
treated  by  us  as  only  evils. 

The  one  point  upon  which  the  world  seems  willing 
to  agree  as  to  the  content  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  is 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  divine  sonship  of  man. 
Now  the  sonship  is  realized  and  revealed  for  us  in  the 
human  experience  and  person  of  Jesus  Christ  Himself; 
as  also  the  full  fact  and  truth  of  the  divine  Fatherhood 
is  felt  and  known  first  by  Him.  He  is  God's  "  Beloved 
Son "  among  all  the  children  of  men,  in  Whom  all  the 
truth  on  both  sides  of  the  mutual  relationship  is  fulfilled 
and  manifested.  It  is  only  as  "of  His  fulness  we  all 
receive,"  that  "He  gives  us  power  to  become  sons  of 
God."  God's  way  of  love  with  Jesus  Christ  is  His  way 
of  love  with  us,  and  the  good  He  wrought  in  and  upon 
Him  is  the  good  He  has  in  store  for  us. 

The  very  strongest  evidence  and  expression  of  the 
Father's  love  for  the  Son,  and  for  the  sons  whom  He 
takes  by  like  process  unto  Himself,  is  contained  in 
the  words,  "He  who  spared  not  His  own  Son  .  .  . 
how  shall  He  not  also  with  Him  freely  (and  in  the  same 
way,  by  the  same  means)  give  us  all  things?"  If  the 
Son,  or  the  son,  is  to  receive  the  "  all  things  "  of  God, 
he  is  to  be  spared  nothing  of  the  conditions  or  means 
or  circumstances,  on  his  part,  of  their  acquisition  and 
enjoyment.  Not  one  jot  or  tittle  of  the  toil  or  the  pain 
or  the  stern  discipline  of  human  life  can  be  spared  him 
9 


114  The  Reason  of  Life 

who  is  to  win  and  wear  "the  eternal  weight  of  glory" 
they  are  to  'work  out'  in  him  who  suffers  and  survives. 
We  are  to  "run  with  patience  the  race  that  is  set  before 
us,  looking  unto  Jesus  the  Author  and  Finisher  of  our 
faith,  who  for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  Him  endured 
the  Cross,  despising  the  shame,  and  is  set  down  at  the 
right  hand  of  the  throne  of  God."  The  point  is,  that 
human  or  earthly  conditions,  the  most  difficult  and  the 
most  painful,  are  not  things  to  be  set  aside  for  us  in  the 
matter  of  our  salvation:  we  are  to  be  saved,  not  from, 
but  through  and  by  them.  It  is  not  that  life  is  to  be  a 
matter  of  mere  patience  and  submission;  we  are  not 
to  submit  to  evils,  but  still  less  are  we  simply  to  com- 
plain of  them  or  expect  them  to  be  removed  out  of  our 
way.  Evils  are  here  for  us  to  remove,  to  conquer 
either  by  abolishing  or  else  by  rising  upon  and  above. 
Are  not,  for  us  at  least,  all  moral  and  spiritual  goods 
conquests  of  opposite  and  possible  evils? 

The  love  of  God  seeks  only  Us:  the  good  of  God 
consists  only  in  what  we  ourselves  are.  And  the  "all 
things"  that  are  working  together  to  that  end  — 
whatever  they  may  be  in  themselves  —  are  in  His 
hands  only  goods  of  God;  though  they  come  to  us  in 
all  the  gloom  of  Gethsemanes  and  with  all  the  pain 
and  shame  of  Calvaries. 


DIVINE  LOVE  IN  HUMAN  SERVICE 

WE  need  to  bring  our  Christianity  down  more  closely 
and  intimately  into  the  natural  and  common  life  of  this 
earth.  There  is  much  in  our  life  here,  necessary  and 
right  now,  that  will  probably  not  survive  with  us  our 
present  conditions.  But  even  these  things  have  their 
place  and  their  part  in  their  time,  and  will  survive  if 
not  in  themselves  yet  in  the  use  we  have  made  of  them 
and  in  the  permanent  effects  their  use  or  abuse  has  left 
in  ourselves.  A  man's  respiration,  circulation,  and 
digestion,  in  so  far  as  they  are  automatic  and  parts  of  a 
general  nature  that  goes  on  without  him,  may  not  be 
properly  or  permanently  himself,  but  they  are  certainly 
parts  of  his  present  self,  and  so  far  as  they  are  in  his 
power  and  under  his  control  for  more  or  less  healthy 
and  efficient  action,  they  are  not  only  himself,  but  very 
important  parts  of  his  duty  and  his  religion.  Upon 
the  action  and  efficiency  of  the  lower  and  commoner 
functions  of  life  depend  most  directly  the  vitality  of 
the  higher  and  permanent  ones.  Every  natural  im- 
pulse, appetite,  and  passion  of  the  physical  life  has  its 
necessary  and  important  part,  and  leaves  its  permanent 
influence  and  impress,  in  the  sum  total  of  the  immortal 
being  who  originated  in  it  and  has  lived  through  it. 

115 


116  The  Reason  of  Life 

Religion  should  begin  early,  embrace  everything,  and 
neglect  nothing  in  the  successive  stages  and  long  proc- 
ess of  human  life,  for  every  moment  and  element  in 
the  evolution  has  its  distinct  and  necessary  contribu- 
tion to  make  to  the  final  result.  The  neglect  of  the 
earthly  life  in  the  interest  of  a  heavenly  is  a  funda- 
mental error. 

Marriage,  the  family,  the  community,  society  in 
general,  as  a  living  organism  rather  than  an  artificial 
organization,  is  older  than  any  history  we  have  of  it. 
States  are  older  than  statesmen,  just  as  languages 
existed  before  grammarians.  Social  life  as  well  as 
physical  has  its  principles  and  laws  antedating  our 
science  or  philosophy  of  them.  The  more  closely  we 
follow  nature  the  better,  so  long  as  we  really  follow  her, 
so  long  as  we  interpret  nature  in  her  highest  meanings 
and  follow  her  along  her  truest  lines.  God  and  nature 
are  not  two  but  One:  Nature's  determinations  and 
destinations  are  God's  predestinations  working  them- 
selves out  in  the  processes  He  has  appointed  them. 
There  is  no  natural  institution  of  society  that  is  not 
infinitely  perfectible,  and  yet  none  that  does  more 
than  look  toward  a  perfection  that  is  infinitely  far 
off.  It  is  not  God's  plan  or  purpose  to  create  by  fiat  a 
perfect  social  condition  upon  earth.  From  the  begin- 
ning He  has  created  by  the  action  of  a  law  within 
things,  by  the  interaction  of  things  among  themselves. 
In  the  world  of  human  intelligence  and  freedom  He  has 
by  natural  processes  instituted  a  perfectible  social 
state  or  condition,  and  devolved  upon  its  subjects  the 


Divine  Love  in  Human  Service       117 

task  of  carrying  on  and  perfecting  it.  This  devolving 
the  social  condition  and  progress  of  the  world  upon  its 
subjects,  and  leaving  it  there,  is  wholly  for  the  sake  and 
in  the  interest  of  the  subjects  themselves,  for  it  is  only 
thus  that  they  become  "  selves  "  or  "  themselves  "  at  all. 
In  using  the  intelligence  that  human  life  requires  they 
acquire  intelligence,  in  exercising  their  own  wills  they 
develop  freedom,  in  restraining  and  regulating  freedom 
they  originate  law,  in  rectifying  and  formulating  law 
they  institute  justice  and  produce  righteousness,  in 
perfecting  social  conditions  in  general  they  make  them- 
selves or  build  up  personality. 

To  complain  that  human  institutions,  that  any 
human  institution  is  defective  or  imperfect,  to  require 
in  thought  that  things  with  us  should  have  been  or 
should  be  made  more  perfect  or  less  imperfect  than 
they  are,  is  to  refute  or  seek  to  invert  the  entire  intent 
and  beneficence  of  nature  or  of  creation:  which  is  not 
that  there  should  be  a  necessarily  and  mechanically 
perfect  world,  but  that  there  shall  be  a  world  of  intelli- 
gently, freely,  and  personally  perfect  persons,  made  so 
or  become  so,  or  becoming  so,  through  the  long  and 
difficult  and  painful  task  and  achievement  of  themselves 
personally  perfecting  the  world.  We  are  no  judges 
or  measurers  of  the  time  requisite  for  such  a  process, 
and  as  to  the  methods  followed  or  the  means  used  in  it 
we  ought  surely  to  know  that  neither  effort,  nor  pain, 
nor  doubt  and  uncertainty,  nor  possibility  of  error 
or  wrong,  nor  the  fact  of  evil,  nor  indeed  any  one  of  our 
actual  conditions  in  the  world,  could  have  been  spared 


118  The  Reason  of  Life 

from  among  the  ingredients.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  not 
only  our  wills,  as  the  poet  says,  but  our  selves,  our 
conditions,  our  world,  are  all  "ours,  we  know  not  how"; 
we  know  not  how,  but  we  do  know  why:  "They  are 
ours,  to  make  them  God's."  God's  end  in  it  all  is  not 
Himself  to  make  them  His,  but  in  our  making  them 
His  to  make  Himself  ours.  In  becoming  coworkers, 
co-creators  with  God,  we  make  ourselves  one  with  and 
partakers  of  God  Himself. 

The  impulse  to  discredit  or  destroy  institutions  that 
go  back  beyond  all  memory  or  knowledge  of  man  — 
such,  for  example,  as  that  of  marriage  —  because  of 
imperfections  or  failures  or  abuses,  instead  of  reading 
their  slowly  unfolding  meaning,  and  looking  forward 
and  patiently  working  up  to  their  future  ideal  perfec- 
tion, however  far  off,  is  an  impatience  incapable  of 
cooperation  with  Him  to  whom  a  thousand  years  are 
as  one  day.  The  divine  intent  of  marriage,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  the  highest  ideal  of  human  relation  and  asso- 
ciation, of  social  purity  and  perfection.  Discredit  of 
it,  leading  inevitably  to  corruption  in  it,  is  poison  at 
the  root  of  human  life. 

The  truth  we  are  trying  to  carry  along  with  us  is, 
that  life  or  salvation  is  not  away  from  the  natural  to 
the  spiritual,  but  through  and  by  the  natural  into  the 
spiritual.  We  are  not  to  love  God  instead  of  our 
neighbor  or  heaven  instead  of  earth,  but  to  love  God 
in  our  neighbor  and  make  heaven  out  of  earth.  If 
we  have  not  loved  the  visible,  how  shall  we  love  the 
invisible?  If  we  have  not  been  faithful  in  the  earthly, 


Divine  Love  in  Human  Service       119 

we  will  not  be  so  in  the  heavenly:  "If  ye  have  not  been 
faithful  in  the  unrighteous  mammon,  who  will  commit 
to  your  trust  the  true  riches?  "  Human  life  grows  up, 
or  is  built  up,  from  the  ground;  it  needs  to  get  the 
proper  good  of  all  its  stages,  in  order  to  have  its  com- 
plete and  perfect  good  in  the  end. 

Moral  good  originates  in  and  is  identical  with  social 
good.  If  goodness  is  the  will  of  the  good,  then,  since 
goodness  is  itself  the  highest  good,  it  is  the  will  of 
itself:  just  as  the  highest  love  is  the  love  of  Love,  so 
the  most  perfect  goodness  is  the  will,  not  merely  of 
good,  but  of  that  completest  good  which  is  goodness. 
It  is  the  will  of  goodness,  not  alone  in  ourselves,  but 
everywhere  and  in  all :  we  have  shown  that  true  egoism 
and  true  altruism,  true  self-love  and  true  other-love, 
are  not  two,  much  less  inconsistent  and  discordant, 
but  one  and  inseparable.  We  are  to  love  other  as  we 
love  ourself :  we  are  indeed  to  love  other  as  ourself : 
we  are  to  take  the  other  into  ourself,  and  to  seek  and 
find  ourself  in  the  other.  So  God  loves  us,  and  so 
He  bids  us  love  Him  —  Himself  in  us,  and  ourselves 
in  Him.  He  and  we  are  all  members  one  of  another 
in  a  common  life. 

Life  is  organized,  as  we  have  seen,  on  social  lines  and 
exists  only  in  the  fulfilment  of  social  relations.  It  is 
born  in  union  and  perfected  in  unity.  That  is  why 
God  is  Love,  and  all  life  is  love:  because  love  is  the 
only  real  and  perfect  bond  or  principle  of  union  and 
unity.  The  most  elemental,  earthly,  human  life  rests 
upon  that  sole  foundation.  "Man,"  says  Aristotle, 


120  The  Reason  of  Life 

"is  a  political,  or  social,  animal"  —  that  is  his  first 
word,  the  seed  of  all  his  subsequent  discourse  about 
him.  And  he  shows  elsewhere  that  the  one  ideal 
perfect  bond  of  society  —  that  which  lies  before,  be- 
hind, and  within  all  mere  justice  or  righteousness,  the 
soul  and  life  of  all  virtue  or  virtues  —  would  be  a 
universal  philia,  his  nearest  approach  to  that  Love 
which,  over  three  hundred  years  after,  our  Lord  came 
into  the  world  to  make  the  realized  and  actual  bond  of 
all  human  life. 

Natural  relations,  associations,  intercourses,  mutual 
offices,  duties  and  services,  are  the  cradle,  the  nursery, 
the  school,  the  gymnasium  for  any  and  all  human  life 
that  may  come  after,  here  or  elsewhere.  Our  Lord 
began  His  divine  office  upon  earth  with  the  humblest 
ministrations  to  the  bodies  of  the  poor,  the  diseased, 
the  repulsive,  the  ungrateful  and  undeserving.  Almost 
His  last  act  was  to  wash  the  disciples'  feet,  and  to  bid 
them  go  forth  into  the  world  and  be  in  it  and  to  it 
what  He  was,  the  servant  of  all.  When  at  the  last 
they  should  come  before  Him  to  receive  His  verdict 
upon  what  their  life  upon  earth  had  taught  and  made 
them,  the  test  and  the  testimony  would  be,  "  Had  they 
been  faithful  in  the  little,  and  to  the  little?  Then 
would  they  be  accepted  as  faithful  unto  Him,  and  in 
the  much."  "Had  they  fed  the  poor,  clad  the  naked, 
visited  the  sick  and  the  prisoner?  What  they  had 
done  to  these  they  had  done  to  Him:"  Service 
rendered  to  love  was  rendered  to  God,  and  God 
would  recognize  or  accept  none  other. 


Divine  Love  in  Human  Service       121 

Religion  begins  with  the  simplest,  the  humblest,  and 
the  most  earthly  of  duties  and  offices,  and  if  it  does 
not  find  God  in  these,  it  will  not  find  Him  elsewhere. 
Life  is  service  or  nothing  with  God;  and  service,  like 
God,  is  no  respecter  of  persons.  God  wants  the  service 
for  the  sake  of  the  server,  the  servant,  as  well  as  the 
served.  It  is  infinitely  more  to  Him  that  we  should 
serve  than  that  He  Himself  should  be  served.  He  can 
dispense  with  our  service,  but  it  is  our  breath  and  our 
life:  only  in  it  have  we  Him;  only  in  doing  His  work 
of  love  are  we  sharing  His  life  of  love,  and  enjoying  the 
blessedness  of  it. 

Life  is  more  a  service,  and  a  more  divine  service, 
when  we  recognize  and  love  it  as  such;  but  whether 
we  know  it  or  not,  or  will  it  or  not,  it  is  still  so  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  and  we  cannot  well  live  it  otherwise. 
It  is  remarkable  how  universally — and  in  spite  of  our- 
selves— we  acknowledge  the  truth  in  terms,  even  when 
we  are  the  most  thoroughly  contradicting  it  in  spirit 
and  intention.  Among  all  the  avocations  or  occupa- 
tions by  which  men  earn  their  living,  and  in  which 
they  practically  live  their  lives,  there  is  probably  not 
one  which  does  not  in  some  way  avow  or  proclaim 
itself  a  service.  In  the  necessary  division  and  subdi- 
vision of  labor  in  every  community,  there  is  no  way 
of  living  for  one's  individual  sett  except  through  some 
sort  of  service  of  the  community.  To  what  an  extent 
life  is  collective  and  organic,  or  social,  and  not  individ- 
ual or  particular,  we  find  it  difficult  to  realize,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  we  dwell  so  much  more  upon  the 


The  Reason  of  Life 

little  that  is  ours  exclusively  than  upon  the  very  much 
that  is  ours  only  inclusively  or  in  common  with  others. 
It  is  literally  true  that  "no  man  liveth  unto  himself": 
either  he  is  not  living  "unto  himself,"  or  he  is  not 
"living." 

The  most  selfish  and  dishonest  politician  is  obliged 
to  claim  or  profess  that  he  "serves"  a  constituency. 
He  is  avowedly  in  the  public  service,  however  he  may 
be  using  it  for  private  ends  or  gain.  No  one  denies 
in  terms,  however  he  may  contradict  it  in  acts,  that 
"  public  office  is  a  public  trust."  But  it  is  so,  not  only 
with  public  office,  but  with  any  kind  of  public  business: 
why  should  certain  large  organizations  or  combina- 
tions of  capital  style  themselves  "Trusts?"  There  is 
no  business  that  does  not  use  habitually  the  language 
of  service:  the  merchant  "serves"  his  customers,  the 
insurance  company  its  patrons,  the  lawyer  his  clients, 
the  doctor  his  patients,  the  master  his  pupils.  Lower 
down  in  the  scale  of  service  we  distinctly  apply  the 
title  "  servants,"  but  who  in  the  universal  occupation 
or  business  of  living  or  of  life  is  not  a  servant? 

Our  Lord  did  not  come  into  the  world  to  make  life 
different  so  much  as  to  make  it  real  —  to  make  it 
what  it  must  be,  what  it  cannot  but  be,  if  it  is  to  be  life 
indeed.  St.  John  says  of  Him,  that  He  was  not  come 
to  give  us  a  new  commandment,  but  to  put  grace  and 
truth,  spirit  and  power  and  reality,  into  the  old  com- 
mandment which  was  from  the  beginning. 

In  human  life,  as  it  is  constituted  by  nature,  every 
act  of  real  service  is  equally  a  service  to  others  and  to 


Divine  Love  in  Human  Service       123 

ourselves.  In  the  highest  as  in  the  lowest  sense  a  man 
"makes  his  living,"  lives  his  life,  by  service.  In 
every  act  of  service  there  are  two  elements,  motive 
or  purpose,  and  consequence  or  result.  When  we 
speak  of  the  end  of  an  action,  we  may  mean  by  it 
either  the  conscious  intention,  or  the  actual  effect 
of  the  action.  The  law  of  these  two,  the  true  relation 
and  proportion  that  ought  to  exist  between  them, 
may  be  the  discovery  or  revelation,  it  is  not  the 
creation  or  invention  of  Christianity.  No  revela- 
tion of  life  to  us  is  true  because  it  is  revealed,  it  is 
revealed  because  it  is  true.  It  is  no  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity that  a  man's  life  or  self  is  not  to  be  an 
end  to  him.  The  end  and  motive  of  Christianity  is 
not  self-extinction,  but  self-realization.  We  are  not 
to  extinguish  desire,  but  rather  "to  desire  earnestly 
the  best  gifts."  The  self  or  personality  in  Jesus  Christ 
is  not  reduced  to  zero  but  raised  to  infinity,  exalted  to 
participation  with  God.  Nevertheless  it  is  a  fact  and 
a  law  in  self-realization,  that  the  less  self  appears  in 
the  motive  the  more  it  is  found  in  the  result  of  all 
human  action,  and  the  more  in  the  motive  the  less  in 
the  result.  That  is,  the  more  in  any  kind  of  service 
we  are  seeking  ourselves,  the  less  we  are  in  reality  serv- 
ing ourselves,  "He  that  seeketh  his  life  shall  lose  it; 
and  he  that  loseth  his  life  for  my  sake  (that  is,  he 
who  most  truly  goes  out  of  or  beyond  himself  in 
others)  shall  find  it." 

This  seems  plain  enough  to  us  in  the  highest  reaches 
of  service  and  sacrifice:  it  is  certainly  in  losing  oneself 


124  The  Reason  of  Life 

in  the  cause  of  God  and  in  the  interests  of  humanity 
that  one  attains  the  highest  selfhood  and  enjoys  the 
purest  satisfactions.  No  one  will  deny  a  generality 
like  that,  but  the  question  is,  Is  the  principle  true  and 
applicable  and  practicable  in  all,  even  the  lowest,  de- 
tails of  our  earthly  life?  We  might  take  any  particu- 
lar business  of  life,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  and 
apply  to  it  such  questions  as  the  following:  Who 
makes,  even  here,  the  truest  success  of  his  business  and 
of  himself,  the  man  who  plies  the  business  with  the 
most  selfish  motive  of  himself  and  his  own  gain,  or  the 
man  who,  with  equal  purpose  and  devotion,  plies  it 
for  its  own  high  sake  as  a  service,  and  for  the  sake  of 
those  whom  he  is  serving  in  it?  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  common  judgment  and  sentiment  of  the  world, 
always  so  far  beyond  and  above  its  actual  working 
principle  and  practice,  sufficiently  answers  that  ques- 
tion. Its  verdict  of  truth,  of  nobility,  of  heroism  in 
action  or  conduct  or  character,  turns  immediately,  if 
not  exclusively,  upon  the  relative  proportion  in  the 
motive  of  self-seeking  or  of  other-regarding.  We  know 
always  what  to  love  and  admire  in  others,  what  to 
celebrate  or  commemorate,  however  little  we  may 
value  or  live  by  it  in  ourselves.  All  natural  heroism 
or  nobility  is  identical  in  principle  with  the  loving, 
self-sacrificing  service  of  Jesus  Christ  to  God  and 
humanity.  He  came  not  into  the  world  to  institute  a 
new  principle  or  law  of  human  life,  but  to  be  the  resur- 
rection and  regeneration  of  the  old  and  the  only.  Even 
the  non-Christian  world's  verdict  of  approval  and 


Divine  Love  in  Human  Service       125 

apotheosis  upon  Jesus  Christ  turns  upon  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact  that  "He  loved  not  Himself  unto  the 
death."     Those  words  express,  not  only  the  perfection 
of  law  to  the  followers  of  our  Lord,  but  the  limit  of 
natural  perfection  for  humanity. 

"I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,  will  draw  all  men  to  me."  The 
Apostle  interprets  the  lifting  up  to  be  that  of  the  cross: 
"this  He  said,  signifying  by  what  death  He  should  die." 
It  was  assuredly  not  the  literal  cross  that  was  the 
lifting  up,  but  that  of  which  the  cross  has  been  made 
by  Him  the  permanent  and  expressive  symbol  —  the 
spirit  and  principle  of  life  and  action  which,  when  car- 
ried out  to  its  limit,  brings  humanity  into  oneness  with 
deity.  Perfect  love  is  the  only  at-one-ment.  There 
is  a  very  high  sense,  the  very  highest,  in  which  it  is 
true  that  all  the  world  loves  Love,  and  cannot  but  love 
the  Lover:  "I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  (lifted  up  by  that 
principle  and  motive,  and  to  that  height,  of  self- 
sacrificing  love  and  service),  will  draw  all  men  unto 
me."  The  world,  when  it  knows,  cannot  but  respond 
to  that  expectation  and  prophecy.  Because  He  was 
infinitely  obedient  to  the  one  divine  spirit  and  law  of 
love,  because  He  loved  not  Himself  unto  the  death  of 
the  cross  —  "therefore  God  exalted  Him  and  gave 
Him  the  name  that  is  above  every  name."  And  there- 
fore also,  for  that  same  reason  —  "At  the  name  of 
Jesus  every  knee  will  bow,  of  things  in  heaven,  of 
things  in  earth,  and  things  under  the  earth,  and  every 
tongue  will  confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord,  to  the 
glory  of  God  the  Father." 


XI 

CHRISTIANITY  THE   UNIVERSAL  MINISTRY 
OF  LIFE 

THE  irresistible  and  inevitable  progress  of  human 
society,  in  all  its  forms,  is  from  monarchy  to  democracy. 
Intelligence,  with  all  its  growing  activities  and  powers, 
diffuses  itself  downward  and  outward  from  the  one  or 
the  few  to  the  many:  its  aim  cannot  stop  short  of  all. 
Life  in  all  its  stretches  and  reaches  must  lie  open  to  all 
who  would  explore  its  deepest  recesses  or  essay  its 
highest  attainments.  Human  thought  and  will,  in  no 
part  of  it,  can  be  kept  in  nonage,  under  guardians  and 
stewards,  forever.  In  spiritual  things  as  in  natural, 
the  world  is  demanding  that  authority  must  meet  and 
cany  with  it  consent.  The  order  and  unity  of  the 
authority  of  one,  is  of  course  an  easier  and  simpler 
thing  than  that  of  the  consent  of  all;  but  the  question 
is,  is  it  a  better  thing?  And  the  better,  and  best,  has 
to  be  sooner  or  later  pursued  through  whatever  of 
confusion  and  pain  and  difficulty.  At  any  rate  the 
easier  thing  has  passed  away  from  among  us  forever, 
and  will  never  be  possible  again;  the  harder  thing  lies 
before  us. 

The  end  of  Christianity  is  the  unity  of  human  life 
with  Christ  in  God.  The  ideal  —  by  which  we  must 

126 


Universal  Ministry  of  Life  127 

mean  the  ultimate,  final  actual,  the  end  and  goal  of 
the  present  imperfect  actual  —  is  not  the  unity  of  or 
under  a  head  outside  and  over  us;  even  though  the  head 
be  Christ  Himself.  The  only  true  head  of  a  body  is 
that  which  is  equally  the  life  and  intelligence  of  every 
part  and  particle  of  the  body.  The  aim  of  the  Church, 
which  is  the  Body  of  Christ,  is  to  be  equally  alive  in  its 
every  part,  in  all  the  abundance  of  His  all-sufficing 
life.  This  does  not  mean  that  there  is  not  to  be  dif- 
ferentiation of  functions  and  division  of  labor.  It  does 
mean  the  unity  and  consent  of  a  life  which,  though  dis- 
tributed through  parts,  is  one  and  is  equally  the  life  of 
the  whole  body. 

The  desideratum  of  Christianity,  then,  is  that  every 
individual  member  of  the  body,  in  his  place  and  part, 
shall  be  and  shall  know  himself  actually  and  always 
engaged  in  the  general  life  and  work  of  Christ.  This 
is  practicable  and  possible  only  through  a  very  much 
larger  appreciation  and  realization  than  we  now  have 
of  the  universality  and  inclusiveness  of  the  life  and 
work  of  Christ. 

A  great  and  important  phase  and  practical  working 
out  of  this  question  is  just  now  presented  to  us  in  the 
"Laymen's  Movement  "  going  on  throughout  our  coun- 
try and  more  or  less  affecting  the  entire  Christian  world. 
What  is  the  immediate  meaning  of  this  movement, 
and  in  what  permanent  form  or  forms  are  its  aspirations 
going  to  be  expressed  and  satisfied?  The  principle 
seeking  expression  in  it  is  that  the  work  of  Christ,  that 
work  which  He  came  into  the  world  to  accomplish, 


128  The  Reason  of  Life 

and  the  actual  accomplishing  of  which  was  to  be  His 
witness  in  and  to  the  world  —  that  work  of  Christ  is 
the  work  of  the  Church,  and  is  waiting  upon  the  Church 
for  its  accomplishment.  That  first  —  and,  secondly, 
that  the  work  of  the  Church  is  the  work  of  the  whole 
Church,  and  can  be  made  so  only  by  its  becoming  the 
work  of  every  member  of  the  Church.  It  is  absurd  to 
suppose  that  Christ  is  going  to  be  a  presence  and  a 
power  upon  the  earth,  unless  the  Church  will  wake  up 
and  become  a  power  and  a  reality  for  Him  —  seeing 
that  the  Church  is  the  Body  of  His  presence  and  the 
instrument  and  organ  of  His  power.  And  it  is  equally 
absurd  to  think  of  a  living  body  in  which  all  the  mem- 
bers, the  least  as  well  as  the  most  prominent  parts,  are 
not  alive  and  performing  their  proper  functions.  If 
the  life  of  Christ  is  to  be  the  life  of  all,  then  the  work  of 
Christ  must  be  work  for  all:  faculty  without  function, 
life  without  work,  is  dead  —  in  fact,  is  death.  -> 

If,  coextensive  with  Church  life,  there  is  to  be  Church 
work  for  all,  then  we  must  broaden  and  enlarge  our 
conception  of  what  is  Church  work;  for  hitherto  the 
body  of  the  Church,  apart  from  a  very  limited  number 
of  differentiated  and  specialized  "workers,"  has  found 
nothing  really  to  do.  We  must  first  widen  Christian 
or  Church  work  to  include  all  that  is  done  in  Christ, 
or  in  the  name  and  in  the  spirit  of  Christ;  and  then  we 
must  expand  what  is  done  in  Christ  into  "all  things 
that  pertain  to  life  and  godliness."  Christianity  in- 
cludes all  life  in  Christ  —  not  only  some,  or  a  part. 
As  all  comes  from  Him  in  creation,  so  He  aims  to  enter 


Universal  Ministry  of  Life  129 

into  all  by  incarnation.  He  shares  all  with  us,  and 
ministers  to  all  in  us  —  the  life  of  body  as  well  as  soul. 
We  cannot,  except  in  the  abstraction  of  thought,  sever 
the  continuity  that  runs  through  and  unifies  all  life, 
from  the  lowest  material  up  to  the  highest  spiritual. 
So  Christ's  mission  and  ministry  was  to  men's  body 
and  bodily  life;  the  heaven  He  brought  and  preached 
was  a  heaven  upon  earth;  the  kingdom  He  set  up  was 
God's  spirit  of  love,  service,  and  sacrifice  to  be  man- 
ifested and  exercised  by  men  among  men  in  the  world. 
All  the  work  of  Christ  is  work  to  be  done  here  and  now. 
Wherever  and  however  life  is  lived  and  service  ren- 
dered in  the  name  and  in  the  spirit  of  Christ,  there 
Christ  is  in  the  life  and  in  the  service.  We  cannot  be 
or  do  in  Him,  without  His  also  being  and  doing  in  us. 
When  then  the  layman  asks  what  of  Christian  or  of 
Church  work  there  is  for  him  to  do,  and  ends  by  finding 
none,  it  is  the  most  fatal  of  mistakes  to  leave  him  in 
the  conclusion  that  there  is  none  for  him  except  as  he 
can  take  some  quasi-part  in  the  official  or  professional 
work  of  the  distinctive  ministry.  What  he  needs  to 
do  is  simply  to  make  his  own  lawful  and  useful  business 
or  profession,  whatever  it  may  be,  a  work  and  his  work 
for  Christ.  Let  him  be  doing  it  "in  Christ,"  in  the  name 
and  in  the  spirit  of  Christ,  and  Christ  will  be  doing  it  in 
him  and  making  it  an  integral  and  necessary  part  of 
the  work  He  is  Himself  on  the  earth  to  accomplish. 
He  did  not  spend  His  time  upon  earth  ministering  only 
to  men's  supermundane  interests  or  teaching  a  heaven 
elsewhere  or  hereafter;  He  brought  God  and  heaven 
10 


130  The  Reason  of  Life 

down  into  hearts  and  lives  and  conditions  here  — 
where  they  are  most  needed  and  therefore  best  ac- 
quired. 

I  do  not  mean  that  laymen  are  not,  upon  occasion, 
and  when  qualified  as  many  of  them  are,  and  more 
ought  to  be,  to  be  interested  and  take  part  in  ministra- 
tions and  services  which  are  now  too  exclusively  made 
the  business  and  left  to  the  care  of  the  clergy.  A  living 
laity  will  help  and  relieve  the  clergy  in  many  ways,  and 
leave  them  freer  for  the  more  essential  parts  of  their 
special  ministry.  But  the  mistake  is  in  supposing  that 
the  special  so-called  or  "  proper"  ministry  is  the  whole 
Ministry  of  Christ,  and  that  one  must  intrude  into  that 
in  order  to  be  exercising  a  ministry  or  doing  Church 
work.  Whereas  every  Christian  is  not  only  a  minister 
but  a  missionary  for  Christ,  and  has  his  own  work  and 
mission  to  accomplish.  And  inasmuch  as  there  is  no 
real  business  upon  earth  which  is  not  in  fact  a  service 
of  God  and  man,  it  follows  that  one  has  only  to  follow 
the  apostolic  injunction,  "whatsoever  we  do  in  word  or 
deed,  to  do  all  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus,"  in  order 
to  know  and  feel  that  one  is  doing  Christian  and  Church 
work.  There  is  not  a  man  or  woman  in  Christ  who 
ought  not  to  —  and,  as  they  truly  realize  the  meaning 
and  the  fact  of  being  in  Christ,  will  not  —  say  with  our 
Lord,  and  as  our  Lord,  "The  work  which  the  Father 
hath  given  me  to  accomplish,  the  work  that  I  do, 
beareth  witness  of  me,  that  He  hath  sent  me." 

We  have  seen  that  theVe  is  no  living  business,  or 
business  of  life,  that  does  not  profess  in  terms  to  be 


Universal  Ministry  of  Life  131 

some  form  or  part  of  that  "service"  or  "ministry"  for 
which  the  Son  of  Man  Himself  professed  to  be  come 
into  the  world.  There  is  no  normal  means  of  one's 
own  livelihood  which  is  not  properly  and  professedly 
a  service  of  others  as  well  as  of  self.  We  have  seen 
that  the  actual  effectiveness  as  well  as  the  moral  and 
personal  worth,  the  benefit  to  self  as  well  as  the  common 
good,  of  all  service  rendered,  is  even  by  the  world's 
judgment  measured  by  the  degree  in  which  self  is  sunk 
out  of  sight  in  the  motive,  to  reappear  unsought  and 
exalted  in  the  reflex  result.  "Wherefore  God  highly 
exalted  Him "  —  but  God  exalted  Him  only  through 
His  own  act,  and  so  alone  He  exalts  us:  it  is  always 
the  act  itself  that  exalts  us,  and  ourselves  through  the 
act.  But  the  law  of  the  process  is,  that  he  most  exalts 
himself  who,  with  least  thought  of  self,  identifies  him- 
self with  and  attains  his  highest  and  truest  self  in  unity 
with  others  and  so  with  God. 

Now  this  process  of  self-finding  through  self-losing, 
of  making  one's  own  life  as  well  as  one's  mere  livelihood 
through  living  in  and  for  others,  is  as  possible  and 
practicable  in  one  avocation  as  in  another.  "The 
Ministry,"  professionally  so-called,  is  no  more  exclu- 
sively the  service  or  ministry  of  Christ  upon  earth 
than  any  other  natural  and  necessary  form  of  living 
for  others.  Anything  done  in  love,  for  the  help  and 
furtherance  of  life,  is  an  actual  and  material  part 
of  the  ministry  of  Jesus  Christ,  so  it  be  done  in  His 
spirit  and  in  His  name.  All  life  is  His  and  is  He: 
in  His  incarnation  He  enters  into  it  all,  in  order  that 


132  The  Reason  of  Life 

by  knowing  Him  in  it  we  may  have  it  more  person- 
ally and  more  abundantly. 

The  man  who  tills  the  ground  as  an  act  of  service  to 
God,  and  in  order  that  it  may  bring  forth  fruit  for  man, 
who  realizes  and  feels  that  he  is  ministering  directly 
to  the  most  elemental  needs  and  wants  of  human  life 
—  working  with  Christ  that  men  may  have  life,  and 
have  it  more  freely  and  abundantly  —  will  in  the  first 
place  be  a  better  tiller  of  the  ground  than  he  who  sees 
nothing  in  his  labor  but  the  material  betterment  of 
himself.  He  will  increase  even  his  most  temporal  gains 
and  condition  by  the  higher  conception  of  himself  and 
his  work,  but  what  other  and  truer  gains  will  he  not 
add  to  himself,  if  he  will  in  even  his  most  menial  tasks 
and  toil  see  himself  a  coworker  with  God  and  with 
Christ,  an  actual  steward  of  God  and  minister  of  Christ 
in  the  producing  and  dispensing  of  life!  So  no  less 
with  any  and  every  other  worker  in  the  varied  but 
universal  and  all-employing  business  of  life.  Our  Lord 
was  no  less  engaged  in  His  ministry  when  He  was  healing 
the  leper  than  when  He  was  saving  the  sinner;  and 
why  should  the  physician  of  bodies  be  less  a  minister 
of  Christ  than  the  physician  of  souls?  Will  the  physi- 
cian be  a  less  good  or  successful  one  in  any,  even  the 
lowest  sense  or  respect,  if  his  practice  is  one  of  love,  ser- 
vice, and  sacrifice,  and  not  merely  (though  that  too)  for 
what  the  world  calls  "a  living"?  Who  is  the  truly 
great  lawyer?  —  he  who  is  the  public-spirited  and 
incorruptible  servant  of  justice  and  humanity,  a  minister 
of  Christ  and  with  Christ  for  the  equity  and  integrity 


Universal  Ministry  of  Life  133 

of  social  and  corporate  life,  or  he  who  uses  his  profession 
as  a  facile  and  powerful  instrument  or  tool  for  the 
furtherance  and  protection  of  selfish  interests? 

The  point  is,  If  Christ's  work  upon  earth  was  and  is 
the  universal  and  all-inclusive  ministry  of  life,  and 
includes  "  all  things  that  pertain  to  life  and  godliness," 
and  if  the  whole  spirit  and  principle  and  law  of  life  and 
godliness  is  expressed  in  the  three  distinctive  Christian 
terms,  Love,  Service,  Sacrifice  —  then  who  that  is 
engaged  in  the  business  of  life  (as  who  properly  is  not?) 
is  excluded  by  his  occupation  from  that  ministry? 
When  the  laity  of  the  Church  come  together  in  a  body, 
from  which  there  should  be  no  exclusions,  to  enquire 
what  they  can  be  actively  and  constantly  doing  for 
Christ  —  what  shall  be  the  answer?  I  am  very  far 
from  saying  that  no  man  shall  go  outside  of  his  own 
special  business  in  search  of  Christian  service,  for  no 
man  should  be  a  mere  specialist,  and  it  is  well  to  be 
called  out  of  our  own  routine,  and  there  are  needs  and 
occasions  enough  for  help  in  others.  But  I  do  say  that 
no  man  need  go  outside  his  own  business  to  find  work 
for  Christ  and  His  Church,  and  that  his  first  and  most 
constant  and  urgent  call  is  to  make  his  own  business 
distinctively  and  avowedly  the  ministry  and  the  mission 
he  is  in  search  of.  If  it  cannot  be  made  so,  or  ought  not 
to  be  made  so,  then  it  is  not  a  legitimate  and  an  honest 
business.  For,  I  repeat,  all  life  is  in  Christ,  and  Christ 
desires  to  be  in  all  life;  what  cannot  and  ought  not  to 
be  in  Him  is  not  life. 

It  so  happened  that  the  above  words  were  in  writing 


134  The  Reason  of  Life 

when  the  writing  was  interrupted  by  the  duties  of 
Good  Friday,  but  with  no  thought  at  the  time  of  the 
services  for  that  day,  on  which  our  Lord  sealed  with 
His  death  His  life  of  unbroken  love,  service,  and  sacri- 
fice. It  may  be  supposed  that  the  following  prayer  in 
the  service  on  that  day  came  into  mind  with  a  peculiar 
force:  "Almighty  and  Everlasting  God,  by  whose 
Spirit  the  whole  body  of  the  Church  is  governed  and 
sanctified,  Receive  our  supplications  and  prayers,  which 
we  offer  before  Thee  for  all  estates  of  men  in  Thy  holy 
Church,  that  every  member  of  the  same  in  his  vocation 
and  ministry  may  truly  and  godly  serve  Thee,  through 
our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ!"  Who  is  there  in 
God's  holy  Church  without  his  own  "  vocation  and 
ministry  "?  And  what  is  there  in  any  one  vocation 
and  ministry  that  is  not  in  essence  in  all?  The  Son 
of  Man  is  the  truth  and  life  of  every  man:  and  every 
man  is  in  Him  "not  to  be  served  but  to  serve,  not 
to  be  ministered  to  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  his 
life  for  many." 

It  so  happened  also,  that  at  the  very  time  of  the  writ- 
ing of  these  thoughts  the  following  words  appeared  in 
the  current  number  of  a  religious  weekly:  "The  spirit 
of  business,  at  its  best  and  highest,  is  the  spirit  of  service. 
No  business  can  prosper  permanently  that  does  not 
find  its  basis  and  its  reason  for  existence  in  rendering 
service  to  those  whom  it  seeks  to  reach.  There  is  of 
course  a  great  deal  of  business  done  which  is  selfish  in 
its  purpose  and  intentions.  But  there  is  also  a  great 
deal  of  business  conducted  by  men  who,  as  consecrate 


Universal  Ministry  of  Life  135 

disciples  of  Jesus  Christ,  are  using  their  energies  and 
their  business  abilities  in  the  spirit  of  a  stewardship 
that  is  responsible  to  Christ." 

There  is  no  reason  why  good  business,  business  con- 
ducted in  a  Christian  spirit  and  upon  Christian  prin- 
ciples, should  not  be  profitable  business,  in  even  the 
worldly  sense.  Whatever  makes  it  good  or  better 
will  naturally  make  it  profitable  and  more  so.  It  is 
not  good  or  better,  for  example,  that  business  should 
be  conducted  "  for  charity,"  as  we  use  the  expres- 
sion. If  we  are  conducting  our  business  upon  right 
principles  of  real  service,  willing  and  doing  good  in 
the  best  sense  to  those  with  whom  we  deal,  we  will 
not  exercise  our  virtue  at  the  expense  of  theirs;  and 
the  charity  which  may  be  the  moral  good  of  the 
doer  or  donor,  we  know  has  too  often  been  the  moral 
weakening  and  injury  of  the  recipient.  The  truest 
principle  of  business,  that  which  best  works  the  total 
good  which  Christianity  is  in  the  world  to  accomplish, 
is  fair  and  equal  exchange.  There  is  room  enough 
and  need  enough  for  true  and  helpful  charity,  without 
injurious  interference  with  justice  and  righteousness. 

When  our  Lord  bids  us  "  seek  first  His  kingdom  and 
His  righteousness,"  with  the  promise  that  the  other 
things  "shall  be  added  to  us,"  neither  the  kingdom  nor 
the  righteousness  of  which  He  speaks  is  a  thing  apart 
from  our  life  and  business  in  this  world.  How  can 
righteousness  originate  or  exist  or  appear  apart  from 
relations  and  interchanges  of  life,  from  business  dealings 
and  associations?  It  is  amid  occasions  and  opportuni- 


136  The  Reason  of  Life 

ties  and  temptations  of  wrongness  that  Tightness  ap- 
pears over  against  and  in  contrast  with  it,  in  conflict 
with  and  triumph  over  it.  But  even  righteousness,  in 
and  of  itself,  is  but  a  formal  notion,  a  law  and  nothing 
more.  As  a  mere  expression  and  rule  of  obligation  it  is 
a  body  without  a  soul.  That  which  gives  it  content 
or  motive  or  life  is  the  spirit  of  Love.  There  is  nothing 
essentially  and  eternally  right  but  love,  the  will  of  good 
to  all;  there  is  no  actual  or  real  love  but  service,  the 
doing  good  to  all;  there  is  no  true  service  but  sacrifice, 
the  spending  of  life  and  self  in  the  service  of  all.  That 
is  God,  that  is  Christ,  that  is  the  Holy  Ghost,  that  is 
Christianity,  that  is  the  ministry,  the  priesthood,  of 
every  Christian  man  and  woman. 

And  this  ministry  is  best  exercised  in  just  that  place 
and  part  which  is  each  man's  business  in  the  necessary 
division  and  subdivisions  of  the  labor  of  life.  It  is 
his  part  and  place  in  the  universal  and  the  eternal, 
his  life  as  one  with  that  of  God  and  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Where  the  parts  are  all  in  the  whole,  the  Whole  is  in 
each  of  the  parts.  We  are  seeking  God's  kingdom  and 
righteousness  first,  when  we  put  the  Whole  which  is 
God  above  the  part  which  is  ourself . 

When  St.  Paul  bids  us  "  set  our  minds  upon  the  things 
that  are  above,  not  upon  the  things  that  are  upon  the 
earth,"  he  is  not  preaching  "  other- worldliness."  The 
things  that  are  above  are  as  much  with  us,  if  our  mind 
is  set  upon  them,  as  the  things  that  are  upon  the  earth. 
If  our  daily  business  and  dealings  and  duties  and  cares 
are  all  what  they  ought  to  be,  and  as  they  ought  to  be, 


Universal  Ministry  of  Life  137 

then  the  kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness  are  as 
truly  in  them  as  the  promised  issue  of  "what  we  shall 
eat  and  drink,  or  wherewithal  we  shall  be  clothed." 
And  the  more  truly  we  put  the  first  things  first,  the 
safer  we  shall  be  from  lacking  the  last. 


XII 
FELLOWSHIP  WITH  GOD 

HUMAN  LIFE,  as  it  is  the  subject  matter  of  Christian- 
ity, may  —  and  indeed  must  —  be  studied  from  oppo- 
site points  of  view,  accordingly  as  we  treat  it  as  our 
life  in  God  or  as  the  life  of  God  in  us.  The  human  life 
of  Jesus  Christ  Himself  must  be  viewed,  separately  if 
not  independently,  in  those  two  aspects.  He  was  son 
of  David,  of  Abraham,  of  Adam,  Son  of  Man,  as  well 
as  Son  of  God;  and  in  His  former  character  or  capacity 
His  life  was  subject  to  all  the  conditions,  laws,  and 
processes  that  belong  to  human  life  in  general.  There 
was  a  natural  evolution  of  human  spirituality,  as  of 
everything  else  that  is  human,  from  Adam,  through 
Abraham  and  David,  to  Jesus.  Our  Lord  humanly 
becomes  Son  of  God  through  every  link  and  moment 
of  the  process  by  which  it  is  necessary  that  man  should 
become  son  of  God.  Genealogically  He  was  born  of  a 
progressively  spiritual  ancestry,  and  only  in  the  fulness 
of  time.  Individually  or  personally  He  becomes  son  of 
God  by  human  act  and  in  the  human  way,  as  well  as 
is  Son  of  God  in  divine  fact.  St.  Paul,  on  the  whole, 
more  clearly  conceives  Christ  in  the  aspect  of  human 
author  of  a  divine  sonship  and  righteousness;  St. 
John  in  the  aspect  of  divine  revealer  and  imparter  of 

138 


Fellowship  with  God  139 

divine  sonship  and  life.  Similarly  we  must  regard 
our  own  spiritual  life  as,  in  one  aspect,  a  human  evo- 
lution and  inheritance,  and  a  personal  act  and  attain- 
ment of  our  own,  though  wrought  only  in  God;  and, 
in  another  aspect,  a  direct  revelation  and  communi- 
cation to  us  from  God  in  Jesus  Christ.  How  to  com- 
bine these  two  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  thing  is 
the  truth  and  task  of  Christianity. 

The  First  Epistle  of  St.  John  may  be  taken  as  a 
dissertation  upon  the  life  of  God  as  it  is  revealed  in  and 
imparted  to  humanity.  He  begins  with  The  Life  as 
it  is  first  manifested  in  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  no,  or 
little,  allusion  to  how  our  Lord  Himself  becomes  what 
He  is  in  our  humanity;  He  is  simply,  in  his  spiritual 
human  perfection,  what  God  reveals  or  manifests 
Himself  in  humanity:  what  He  wills  and  purposes,  if 
we  will,  to  become  in  us  all.  The  Apostle  describes 
the  manifested  Life  in  terms,  not  alone  of  a  natural 
witness  who  had  had  every  sensible  evidence  and 
experience  of  the  external  and  historical  facts  involved, 
but  no  less  of  a  spiritual  witness  who,  as  fully  as  any 
other,  apprehended  the  deeper  import  and  significance 
of  those  facts.  He  sees  the  life  that  has  come  down 
from  God  perfected  and  glorified  in  Man;  and  in  full 
confidence  and  assurance  of  participation  himself  in 
that  life,  he  goes  forth,  in  the  joy  of  it,  to  complete  his 
joy  by  making  all  others  partakers  of  it.  "We  declare 
it  unto  you,  that  ye  also  may  have  fellowship  with  us; 
yea,  and  our  fellowship  is  with  the  Father,  and  with 
His  Son  Jesus  Christ." 


140  The  Reason  of  Life 

The  first  question  for  us,  is  as  to  the  meaning  and 
reality  of  that  fellowship  or  koinonia,  in  which  the  life 
is  to  consist.  What  is  it  of  God,  or  rather,  what  is  God 
Himself,  that  we  can  share  with  Him?  The  answer 
is:  that  God  is  Light,  and  in  Him  is  no  darkness  at 
all.  Among  the  many  possible  explanations  of  the 
meaning  of  "  light  "  in  this  connection,  we  may  consider 
the  following:  The  light  is  not  alone  that  of  the  intel- 
ligence, as  Truth;  it  is  equally  of  the  feeling  or  affec- 
tion, as  Love;  and  of  the  will  and  life,  as  Holiness  and 
Righteousness.  We  might  say  that  "light"  is  simply  a 
synonym  for  "  truth,"  if  we  include  in  "  truth  "  that, 
not  only  of  thought  or  knowledge,  but  also  of  feeling  or 
affection,  and  of  will  and  action.  These  are  the  three 
constituent  elements  of  ourselves,  and  in  each  there  is 
a  true  and  a  possible  false,  or  light  and  darkness.  The 
truth  of  intelligence  is  "  the  right  reason,"  wisdom,  the 
knowledge  of  things  as  they  are.  The  truth  of  affec- 
tion or  feeling  is  love,  the  right  feeling  for,  the  right 
pleasure  or  happiness  in  the  right  things.  The  truth 
of  the  will  and  activity  is  true  freedom,  the  obedience 
of  the  whole  life  to  the  law  of  truth  and  love.  Thus 
Light  is  the  unity  of  the  three  prismatic  hues  or  aspects 
of  human  life,  knowledge  or  wisdom,  love,  and  obedi- 
ence or  righteousness.  Of  these,  love  is  the  central  and 
chief:  it  is  the  substance  and  content  of  the  other  two. 
In  a  sense  it  alone  is  real,  and  not  merely  formal. 
Knowledge  is  of  "  the  things  that  are,"  independently 
of  what  the  things  are  —  good  or  bad.  Obedience  is 
conformity  to  a  law,  equally  independently  of  what 


Fellowship  with  God  141 

the  law  is.  Love  is  wish  and  will,  not  possibly  of  any 
thing  else,  but  only  of  "  the  good."  To  wish  or  will 
evil,  for  oneself  or  for  another,  is  not  to  love  but  to  hate. 

In  consonance  with  this,  it  is  evident  that  in  the 
Epistle,  Light  is  used  in  all  the  meanings  of  Truth, 
Love,  and  Obedience;  and  that  Love  is  at  once  the 
content  of  Truth,  the  reality  to  be  known,  the  "  Thing 
that  Is  "  in  the  universe;  and  the  object  or  law  of 
Obedience:  it  was  to  the  law  of  love  that  Jesus  was 
obedient  unto  death,  and  that  the  death  of  the  cross: 
love  is  the  spirit  and  life  of  all  righteousness. 

We  come  thus  to  the  main  question  of  our  koinonia 
or  fellowship  with  God,  and  here  there  is  a  matter  of 
interpretation  to  be  first  considered.  "God  is  Light; 
if,  therefore,  we  say  that  we  have  fellowship  with  Him, 
and  are  walking  in  the  darkness  (of  ignorance,  or  hate, 
or  sin),  we  lie  and  do  not  the  truth.  But  if  we  are 
walking  in  the  light,  even  as  He  is  in  the  light,  then  have 
we  fellowship  one  with  another."  The  point  is,  Who 
are  the  "  one  another"  in  this  relation:  who  are  the  two 
parties  to  the  fellowship?  If  we  suffer  ourselves  simply 
to  follow  the  argument  or  course  of  thought,  it  would 
seem  that  the  two  parties  are  ourselves  and  God.  If 
our  not  walking  in  the  light,  which  is  God,  be  evidence 
that  we  are  not  in  God,  or  in  participation  with  God, 
who  is  light,  then  the  fact  that  we  are  in  the  light  is 
proof  that  we  are  in  God,  or  that  God  and  we  are  in 
fellowship  with  one  another.  The  Apostle  had  already 
affirmed  that  our  fellowship  is  with  the  Father  and 
with  His  Son  Jesus  Christ.  This  does  not  exclude  the 


142  The  Reason  of  Life 

subordinate  and  consequent  truth  that  participation 
with  God  is  necessarily  participation  with  one  another 
in  God.  In  the  case  of  the  Apostle,  fellowship  with 
God  impels  him  instantly  to  the  further  and  completing 
truth  and  joy  of  fellowship  with  the  brethren:  "that 
ye  also  may  have  fellowship  with  us,  ...  that  our 
joy  may  be  fulfilled."  God  in  us  would  mean  infi- 
nitely less  to  us  if  it  did  not  mean  God  in  all,  and 
all  in  one  another. 

What,  then,  have  we,  or  what  are  we,  in  common 
with  God?  This  cannot  but  include  or  involve  the 
previous  question,  What  is  our  natural  or  metaphysi- 
cal kinship  or  relationship  with  God?  Because  there 
can  be  no  transcendent  interchange  of  relations  with 
God,  if  there  is  no  immanent  basis  of  relationship  with 
Him.  Without  oneness  of  nature,  there  can  be  no 
oneness  of  communion  or  intercourse.  And  such  in- 
deed is  our  natural  kinship  with  God  that  we  cannot 
know  or  think  either  except  in  terms  of  the  other.  As 
we  have  seen,  we  know  ourselves  only  under  the  cate- 
gories of  thought,  feeling,  and  will  or  action;  our 
"self,"  or  personality,  is  a  compound  and  unity  of  in- 
telligence, affection,  and  volition  and  action.  Now 
what  is  God?  He  is  infinite  or  omniscient  intelligence, 
or  Wisdom;  He  is  infinite  or  perfect  affection,  or  Love; 
He  is  infinite  or  omnipotent  activity,  or  Righteousness 
and  Goodness.  Is  it  not  true  that  God  is  the  Infinite 
of  what  we  are,  and  that  we  are  the  finite  of  what  God 
is?  The  first  word  of  religion  is  the  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  we  are  in  the  image  of  God.  To  know  God 


Fellowship  with  God  143 

at  all  we  have  to  know  ourselves;  to  know  ourselves 
unto  perfection,  we  have  to  know  God.  To  be  our- 
selves unto  perfection,  we  have  to  be  what  God  is. 
It  is  a  natural  and  metaphysical  fact  that  we  "  do  not 
the  truth,"  that  we  are  not  the  truth  of  ourselves,  are 
not  our  real  selves,  until  we  walk  hi  the  light,  and  are 
what  God  is.  There  is  no  other  end  or  limit  or  goal 
for  man  than  God.  What  we  want  from  Him  is  noth- 
ing less  than  Himself,  seeing  that  He  is  our  own  and 
only  perfect  Self. 

But  the  truth  which  St.  John  is  enunciating  is  not 
an  immanent  but  a  transcendent  one,  not  a  fact  of 
nature  but  a  revelation  and  impartation  of  grace.  Or, 
if  these  are  essentially  the  same,  it  is  as  one  and  not 
as  the  other  that  they  are  here  under  consideration. 
If  it  is  our  nature,  or  in  our  nature,  to  be  saved  and 
completed  only  in  God,  it  is  not  only  in  our  nature,  or 
in  our  only  immanent  and  natural  relation  to  God, 
that  we  shall  be  saved  and  completed.  God  will  have 
to  make  Himself  and  ourselves  known  to  us  by  a  tran- 
scendent act  of  Self  revelation  and  impartation,  before 
we  can  realize  either  Himself  in  us  or  ourselves  hi  Him. 
That,  too,  is  a  metaphysical  necessity:  it  is  essential 
to  our  very  being  as  persons,  as  finite  spirits  and  chil- 
dren of  God,  reproduction  and  image  of  Himself,  that 
what  we  shall  be  we  shall  be  of  ourselves.  That  is  to 
say,  what  we  are  to  be  must  be  matter  of  our  knowl- 
edge, our  choice,  and  our  action,  if  there  is  to  be  any 
selfhood  in  it  for  us,  or  we  are  to  accomplish  and 
become  ourselves  through  it. 


144  The  Reason  of  Life 

It  is  therefore  not  as  God  is  in  us  in  nature,  but  as  He 
is  in  us  in  Jesus  Christ,  by  Self  revelation  and  imparta- 
tion  on  His  part,  and  by  faith  and  personal  appropria- 
tion on  our  part,  that  we  are  here  described  as  having 
with  Him  something  more  than  is  adequately  described 
by  the  term  "  fellowship,"  and  for  which  I  would 
retain  the  original  koinonia.  That  evidently  expresses 
more  than  association  or  communion  with  another: 
the  two  are  no  longer  two,  but  are  become  one.  It 
means  more  than  sharing  something  with  God:  what 
we  share  with  Him  is  Himself;  when  we  have  truth, 
and  love,  and  righteousness  or  goodness,  we  have  God. 
Love  is  both  Truth  and  Righteousness,  because  Love 
is  God  —  not  merely  That  which  Is,  biit  the  essential 
and  eternal  /  Am. 

When  we  say  that  "Our  fellowship  is  with  the 
Father,  and  with  His  Son  Jesus  Christ,"  we  mean  that 
we  become  one  with  the  Father  in  the  Son  —  that  in 
the  sonship  to  God,  realized  for  us  by  Christ,  God  has 
become  to  us  Father,  and  we  have  become  to  Him  sons. 
The  time  has  come  when  we  may  settle  by  reconciling  a 
controversy  which  has  given  rise,  not  only  to  rival 
schools  of  thought,  but  to  rival  types  of  life.  The 
question  has  been,  Whether  we  are  children  of  God  by 
nature,  or  only  become  children  of  God  by  grace — 
whether  we  are  so  by  birth,  or  only  by  regeneration  or 
new  birth  —  by  immanent  fact  or  by  transcendent  act. 
Both  are  true,  and  neither  is  truth  apart  from  the 
other.  The  confusion  or  contradiction  arises  from  not 
realizing  that  sonship  is  both  a  natural  and  a  personal 


Fellowship  with  God  145 

or  spiritual  relationship;  that  it  partly  is,  as  a  fact, 
and  partly  must  become,  as  an  act.  "Because  we  are 
sons"  —  that  may  be  taken  as  a  fact  of  nature; 
"God  sent  forth  the  Spirit  of  His  Son  into  our  hearts, 
crying,  Abba,  Father"  —  that  was  an  act  of  grace. 
The  immanent  or  natural  fact  would  come  to  naught, 
that  is,  would  never  be  spiritually  realized  and  actual- 
ized in  us,  without  the  transcendent  and  personal  act: 
what  is  the  relation  of  son,  without  the  spirit  and  life 
of  sonship?  Regeneration  then  presupposes  natural 
sonship,  and  natural  sonship  is  only  the  ground  or 
condition,  the  potentiality  for  regeneration  or  realized 
sonship,  and  is  incomplete  without  it.  Because  we 
are  sons  of  God  by  nature,  therefore  we  must  become 
sons  of  God  by  grace  through  faith,  that  is,  by  the 
Spirit  of  God  working  in  and  with  and  through 
ourselves. 

As  a  matter  of  mere  Scripturalness,  or  the  point  of 
view  of  the  New  Testament,  the  position  of  sonship 
by  grace  rather  than  by  nature  has  the  stronger 
argument.  Sonship  by  nature  is  only  a  postulate  or 
presupposition  of  historic  Christianity,  which  is  imme- 
diately concerned  rather  with  the  realization  of  hu- 
manity through  spiritually  accomplished  sonship  in 
Jesus  Christ,  than  with  the  unrealized  sonship  of  hu- 
manity in  Adam  —  that  is,  in  mere  nature  or  in  itself. 
Jesus  Christ  is  regenerate  or  spiritual  humanity,  as 
Adam  or  primitive  man  is  the  symbol  of  natural  or 
unregenerated  humanity.  The  sequence  and  connec- 
tion of  truth  in  this  matter  may  be  illustrated  by  what 
11 


146  The  Reason  of  Life 

seems  to  be  the  meaning  of  an  obscure  passage  in  the 
Epistle  before  us.  In  Ch.  II.  7,  the  Apostle  is  insisting 
that  the  truth  of  which  he  writes  is  no  new  truth,  but 
the  old  truth  that  was  from  the  beginning.  But,  again, 
he  declares,  it  is  new:  because  it  has  been  made  truth 
in  Jesus,  and  in  Him  has  become  truth  for  us.  Now 
apply  this  to  our  sonship  to  God:  in  a  partial  sense  it 
is  an  old  fact  which  has  been  from  the  beginning.  But 
in  the  better  part  of  its  truth  —  in  its  realization  and 
actualization  —  it  has  become  what  it  never  was 
before,  and  is  new. 

Quite  as  important  as  the  truth  of  regeneration  in 
Christ,  is  the  question  of  its  mode  —  or  "way,"  as  our 
Lord  Himself  calls  it.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  it 
is  by  grace  through  faith,  unless  we  understand  some- 
thing of  the  process  of  each  of  these.  And  first  with 
regard  to  grace  and  its  mode  of  operation:  Grace  is 
indeed  a  species  of  power,  inasmuch  as  it  is  an  efficient 
cause  producing  a  definite  effect.  But  it  is  a  species 
widely  differentiated  from  mere  power,  or  from  power 
necessarily  or  inseparably  connected  with  its  effect. 
Grace  is  never  bare  operation:  it  is  effectual  coopera- 
tion. The  subjects  of  grace  are  only  those  in  whom 
its  working  is  in  and  with  and  through  their  own  work- 
ing. The  perfection  of  the  operation  of  divine  grace 
in  human  cooperation  is  manifest  in  Him  who  could 
say:  "I  and  my  Father  are  one:"  "My  will  is  His  and 
His  is  mine;  my  works  are,  of  course,  mine;  and  yet 
not  mine,  but  His  in  me."  The  paradox  of  divine  grace 
can  never,  any  more  than  that  of  human  freedom  in 


Fellowship  with  God  147 

general,  be  elucidated  in  logic,  while  yet  it  is  indispu- 
table in  experience.  The  divine  is  present  and  efficient 
in  the  human,  while  the  human  maintains  all  its  in- 
tegrity and  acts  freely  in  the  divine;  so  that  one  and 
the  same  act  is  both  human  and  divine;  as,  altogether, 
in  our  Lord  one  and  the  same  person  is  both  human  and 
divine.  The  cooperation  is  not  the  semi-pelagian  one 
in  which  each  side  does  so  much,  in  different  parts;  it 
is  rather  that  of  the  hypostatic  union,  in  which  each 
does  all,  in  perfect  union,  or  unity,  with  the  other. 
The  human  manifests  itself  in  no  positive  independence 
of  the  divine,  but  only  negatively  in  the  power  of  non- 
cooperation,  and  so  in  the  freedom  of  its  cooperation. 

Grace  appeals  thus  to  cooperation,  and  is  ineffectual 
without  it;  otherwise  it  were  not  grace,  but  bare  power. 
It  can  be  resisted,  grieved,  and  even  quenched  by  the 
unpardonable  sin  of  final  rejection:  "How  would  I, 
and  ye  would  not!"  And  how  can  the  appeal  for  co- 
operation be  made  to  aught  save  intelligence,  choice, 
and  freedom;  or  otherwise  than  through  all  these? 
The  essence  of  divine  grace  is  divine  Self-communi- 
cation: God  gives  us  nothing  less  than  Himself.  And 
He  can  give  us  Himself,  or  we  receive  Him,  only  through 
our  knowledge,  love,  acceptance  and  exercise  of  Him. 
Only  through  all  these  can  we  of  ourselves  become 
what  He  is;  and  we  cannot  be  what  He  is  without 
ourselves  becoming  it,  because  the  being  so  through 
bare  power,  and  not  grace,  would  not  in  fact  be  we 
being  so. 

I  would  not  deny  all  truth  to  natural  religion  with- 


148  The  Reason  of  Life 

out  revelation:  or,  as  I  would  express  it,  I  would  not 
deny  a  knowledge  and  service  of  God  based  upon 
mere  inference  from  ourselves  and  the  universe,  and 
our  immanent  relation  to  Him,  without  transcendent 
communication  from  Him.  I  concede,  on  the  contrary, 
that  if  there  were  no  natural  there  could  be  no  revealed 
religion.  Natural  religion  is  simply  the  potentiality 
and  demand,  of  which  revealed  is  the  actuality  and 
supply. 

But,  while  natural  religion  may  give  us  a  knowledge 
about  God,  it  would  not  give  us  that  knowledge  of 
Him  which  is  Himself  with  us  and  in  us,  and  which  we 
have  only  in  and  through  Jesus  Christ.  Nor  can  we 
see  how  otherwise  that  knowledge  could  have  come  to 
us  than  in  Him  who  is  at  once  God  and  we,  God  Him- 
self our  holiness,  our  righteousness,  and  our  life.  In 
Jesus  Christ  we  have  at  once  that  knowledge  of  our- 
selves which  enables  us  to  know  God,  and  that  knowl- 
edge of  God  which  enables  us  to  know  ourselves.  For, 
I  repeat,  we  can  neither  know  God  at  all  save  through 
what  we  finitely  are,  nor  ourselves  adequately  save 
through  what  God  infinitely  is.  In  Jesus  Christ  we 
have  the  totality  of  religion  realized  —  not  in  ourselves, 
for  that  were  impossible  in  the  beginning — but  in  Him 
as  the  object  and  end  of  our  knowledge,  our  choice, 
and  our  will,  of  our  faith,  hope,  and  love,  of  all  our 
doing,  becoming,  and  real  or  essential  being.  How 
otherwise  could  God  better,  or  at  all,  bring  us  into  all 
that  Himself  is? 

As  grace  proceeds  from  the  eternal  love  that  God 


Fellowship  with  God  149 

Himself  is,  and  reveals  or  communicates  itself  to  us  in 
the  divine  oneness  with  us  that  is  Jesus  Christ,  so  it 
manifests  itself  hi  us  in  that  koinonia  of  ourselves  with 
God  hi  Christ,  which  is  our  present  theme,  and  which 
is,  in  fact,  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  Holy  Ghost  must, 
with  equal  truth,  be  spoken  of  as  It  and  as  He.  As  to 
what  it  is,  when  we  speak  of  it  as  impersonal  spirit, 
it  is  that  character  or  quality  of  divine  Love,  which  is 
the  sole  principle  of  all  unity,  and  order,  and  beauty, 
and  goodness,  and  real  or  essential  life.  Hereby  know 
we  that  we  are  of  God,  that  we  are  in  Him  and  He  in 
us,  that  He  and  we  are  one —  that  He  hath  given  us 
of  His  spirit:  "We  know  that  He  abideth  in  us,  by 
the  spirit  that  He  hath  given  us." 

If  we  have  not  what  the  Spirit  is,  we  have  not  Him, 
and  cannot  know  Who  He  is.  If  we  have  it,  we  have 
Him,  and  know  that  He  is  God.  There  is  nothing  in 
God  that  is  merely  impersonal.  If  Jesus  Christ  was 
the  word  or  utterance,  the  revelation  or  manifestation 
of  God  to  us,  then  He  was  the  eternal  Personal  Word 
of  God,  who  is  Himself  God  to  us.  If  the  Holy  Ghost 
is  the  spirit  of  God  in  us,  the  mind,  disposition,  and 
character  of  God  become  ours,  then  is  He  the  eternal 
Personal  Spirit  of  God,  who  is  Himself  God  in  us.  Our 
word  or  our  spirit  may  become  detached  from  us,  and 
become  in  others  only  they,  and  no  longer  we.  We 
ourselves  may,  without  detriment  to  them,  be  not 
merely  absent,  but  even  wholly  extinct.  But  God's 
Word  and  God's  Spirit  are  never  detached  from  Him- 
self, but  are  always  Himself  both  present  and  operative 


150  The  Reason  of  Life 

in  them.  It  is  the  worst  of  anthropomorphisms,  to  think 
or  speak  of  God's  acts  or  influences  or  operations  as 
separate  from  Himself,  as  ours  are.  It  is  the  sin  of  a 
mere  transcendentalism  or  deism,  as  the  opposite  ex- 
treme is  the  sin  of  a  mere  immanentalism  or  pantheism. 
The  true  theism  is  that  which  does  full  justice  alike 
to  the  transcendence  and  the  immanence  of  God. 

The  life  of  God  is  represented,  first,  as  coming  down 
into  us  from  God,  in  a  series  of  stages;  and  secondly, 
as  ascending  lip  in  us,  into  God,  in  an  answering  suc- 
cession of  stages.  Love  in  the  Father  becomes  grace 
or  divine  Self-communication  in  the  Son,  and  finally 
fellowship,  or  human  participation  in  the  divine,  in  the 
Holy  Ghost,  in  whom  the  Spirit  of  God  and  the  spirit 
of  man  are  brought  into  a  divine-human  unity,  which 
is  Christ  in  us.  The  answering  ascent  on  man's  part 
is  from  faith,  through  hope  or  anticipative  possession, 
up  to  and  into  love,  which  is  actual  or  accomplished 
possession.  Of  course,  in  both  series,  love  runs  through 
all  and  underlies  all.  Just  as  grace  and  fellowship  are 
only  progressive  means  and  operations  of  the  self- 
imparting  of  love,  so  also  faith  and  hope  are  but 
progressive  ways  and  means  on  our  part  of  our 
participation  and  growth  in  love. 

The  process'of  faith,  hope,  and  love  may  be  described 
somewhat  as  follows :  The  life  of  God,  to  be  really  ours, 
must  be  ours  of  our  own  choice  and  of  our  own  act. 
The  "we,"  of  personal  quality  and  character,  must  be 
all  in  it.  God  gives  us  to  have  life  in  ourselves:  the 
water  He  gives  us  becomes  hi  us  a  well  of  life  having  its 


Fellowship  with  God  151 

source  in  us  as  well  as  in  Him.  Through  faith,  hope, 
and  love,  Christ  becomes  ourselves,  and  His  Spirit  our 
own.  But  the  life  of  God  thus  becomes  ours,  not  by  a 
divine  magic,  but  in  a  human  process  and  order.  God 
in  Christ,  by  His  Spirit,  enters  into  us  through  the  only 
personal  channels  of  intelligence,  affection,  and  voli- 
tion. We  must  know  life,  desire  life,  will  and  purpose 
life,  before  we  can  really  or  fully  possess  life.  Even 
the  earliest  of  these  stages  is  indeed  already  a  beginning 
of  life,  but  it  is  very  far  off  as  yet  from  the  end  of  it. 
Life  must  come  to  us  first  from  without;  it  must  be 
an  object,  before  it  can  become  a  possession:  we  must 
know  it  without  us  before  we  can  have  it  within  us. 
And  what  is  all  important,  we  must  know  it  without 
us  as  ours,  in  God's  purpose,  and  by  God's  act,  before 
we  can  possibly  realize  it  as  ours,  in  us  and  by  our  own 
act.  Who  will  of  himself  conceive,  or  by  his  own  act 
alone  undertake,  all  that  to  which  we  are  called  of 
God  in  Christ  Jesus?  "Whom  He  foreknew,  them 
He  predestinates  to  be  conformed  to  the  image  of  His 
Son,  that  He  might  be  the  First  only  of  many,  or  of 
all.  Moreover,  whom  He  predestinated  He  calls: 
Christ  is  the  call  to  every  man,  to  become  what  He  is. 
The  elect  are  the  effectually  called:  that  is,  all  who 
answer  and  obey  the  call.  Those  thus  called  He  justi- 
fies: that  is,  He  accepts  as  being,  in  grace  and  in  faith, 
in  Christ.  And  then,  by  His  grace  and  through  their 
faith,  in  Christ  He  progressively  sanctifies  and  ulti- 
mately glorifies  them."  If  God  be  thus  for  us,  and 
with  us,  and  in  us  —  for  us,  eternally  in  Himself  as 


152  The  Reason  of  Life 

Father;  with  us,  effectually  in  Jesus  Christ  as  Son;  in 
us,  actually  and  in  progressive  assimilation  on  our 
part  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  the  common  Spirit  of  His 
and  our  life  —  if  God  be  thus  ours  throughout  the 
entire  process  of  our  attainment  of  life,  what  can  be 
against  us  in  it  or  disappoint  us  of  it?  How  necessary 
is  it  that  we  should  have  this  objective  revelation  to 
us  of  ourselves  and  our  destiny,  of  the  part  of  God  in 
it,  and  of  the  part  that  waits  and  depends  upon  our- 
selves! How  needful  was  the  divine  manifestation 
of  human  life  in  Jesus  Christ  —  "  for  our  sake,  who 
through  Him  are  believers  in  God,  which  raised  Him 
from  the  dead  and  gave  Him  glory;  so  that  our  faith 
and  hope  might  be  in  God!"  "The  greatness  of  His 
power  to  us  ward  who  believe"  is  measured  for  us 
by  "the  working  of  the  strength  of  His  might  which  He 
wrought  in  Christ,  when  He  raised  Him  from  the  dead." 
It  is  thus  that  the  Holy  Ghost  in  us  is  "the  earnest 
of  the  promised  possession."  St.  John  says  that  we 
have  "a  chrism  from  the  Holy  One":  what  of  the 
Spirit,  or  spirit,  of  God  and  of  Christ  is  abidingly  in  us, 
as  part  of  our  life  and  character,  is  so  much  of  Christ 
and  of  God  in  us,  and  is  both  potency  and  promise  of 
all.  Faith  is  of  God  and  of  God's  part  in  our  life;  hope 
is  of  us  and  our  part.  It  is  only,  as  St.  Paul  teaches,  in 
the  tribulation  of  life,  that  endurance  and  perseverance 
and  survival  on  our  part  works  in  us  proof  of  the  suffi- 
ciency of  grace,  and  of  our  own  power  through  it;  and 
so  faith  passes  on  into  hope,  and  through  both  love, 
the  love  of  God,  is  fulfilled  in  us. 


Fellowship  with  God  153 

He  who  in  the  Son  sees  the  Father,  who  in  Jesus 
Christ  recognizes  the  Life  of  God  manifest  upon  earth, 
who  by  the  Holy  Ghost  appropriates  that  life  to  him- 
self and  assimilates  himself  to  it,  has  set  to  his  seal 
that  God  is  true.  The  truth  of  humanity  answers  unto 
and  fits  into  the  truth  of  God,  and  the  unity  of  both  is 
proof  of  the  truth  of  each.  He  who  denies  God  in 
Christ,  by  the  lie  in  himself  makes  God  a  liar  to  him. 
For  this  is  the  witness  of  God:  "that  He  hath  given 
unto  us  eternal  life,  and  this  life  is  in  His  Son.  He 
that  hath  the  Son  hath  the  life;  he  that  hath  not  the 
Son  of  God  hath  not  the  life." 


XIII 
CHRISTIANITY   AS  A    WITNESS 

THE  last  words  of  our  Lord  to  His  Apostles  before 
His  final  taking  up  from  among  them  were  these:  "Ye 
shall  receive  power,  when  the  Holy  Ghost  is  come  upon 
you;  and  ye  shall  be  my  witnesses  .  .  .  unto  the  utter- 
most part  of  the  earth."  When  the  Holy  Ghost  was 
come  upon  them,  the  first  testimony  of  the  Apostles 
before  the  people  was  to  this  effect:  "This  Jesus  hath 
God  raised  up,  whereof  —  or,  of  Whom  —  we  all  are 
witnesses."  And  again,  before  the  rulers:  "Ye  killed 
the  Prince  —  or,  Author  —  of  life;  whom  God  raised 
again  from  the  dead,  whereof  —  or,  of  Whom  —  we  are 
witnesses."  They  everywhere  emphasize  their  witness; 
and  the  ambiguity  in  the  form  of  the  pronoun  only  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  Jesus  and  the  resurrection  are 
convertible,  and  to  a  certain  extent  identical  terms: 
that  testimony  to  the  one  is  testimony  to  the  other. 
Let  us  consider,  first,  the  persons  of  the  witnesses,  and, 
secondly,  the  matter  of  the  witness. 

We  might  limit  the  persons  of  the  witnesses  to  the 
number  of  the  Apostles.  Unquestionably,  they  were 
the  primary  witnesses,  chosen  with  special  reference 
to  that  end.  When  there  was  a  vacancy  in  their  num- 
ber, they  felt  it  necessary  that  "Of  the  men  who  had 

154 


Christianity  as  a  Witness  155 

companied  with  them  all  the  time  that  the  Lord  Jesus 
went  in  and  out  among  them,  beginning  from  the  bap- 
tism of  John,  unto  the  day  that  He  was  received  up 
from  them,  of  these  must  one  become  a  witness  with 
them  of  the  resurrection."  Perhaps  the  claim  is  not 
unreasonable,  that  the  Apostolate  as  a  permanent  in- 
stitution is  a  standing  monument  and  witness  of  Jesus 
and  the  resurrection  to  the  end  of  time,  as  well  as  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth.  There  can  be  no  question  that 
the  Episcopate,  whatever  be  the  details  of  its  origin, 
was  from  the  beginning  intended  and  looked  upon  as 
the  instrument  and  expression  of  the  unity  and  univer- 
sality —  the  catholicity  —  of  Christianity,  or  of  the 
Church,  in  both  space  and  time.  And  what  is  either 
Christianity  or  the  Church  but  the  extension  or  uni- 
versal inclusiveness  of  Jesus  and  the  Resurrection? 

But  witness  to  Jesus  and  the  Resurrection  was  not 
limited  to  the  Apostles,  and  certainly  in  no  exclusive 
way  has  been  transmitted  through  the  Episcopate. 
There  is  a  much  deeper  and  truer  sense  in  which  all 
real  Christians  are  witnesses,  and  Christianity  itself  is 
essentially  the  witness  to  Jesus  and  the  resurrection. 
This  will  become  apparent  as  we  examine  the  witnesses 
more  in  connection  with  their  witness.  A  large  part 
of  that  witness  was  without  doubt  that  of  literal  eye- 
witnesses to  external  and  physical  facts,  historical 
incidents  or  events.  Such,  on  one  side  of  them,  were 
certainly  both  Jesus  and  the  resurrection.  But  if  that 
were  all,  why —  what  possible  reason  or  meaning  could 
there  be  for  —  the  promise,  "Ye  shall  receive  power, 


156  The  Reason  of  Life 

when  the  Holy  Ghost  is  come  upon  you,"  as  the  condi- 
tion of  their  becoming  witnesses?  Could  anything  more 
than  sound  senses,  good  memories,  and  common  hon- 
esty be  required  for  competent  testimony  to  common 
facts?  Is  it  not  plain  that  these  particular  witnesses 
needed  something  more  than  physical  or  natural  quali- 
fications for  testimony  to  something  more  than  physi- 
cal or  natural  facts?  It  was  not  enough,  what  they  saw 
or  heard  with  natural  eyes  and  ears;  the  important 
point  was,  what  they  saw  in  what  they  saw,  and  heard 
through  what  they  heard.  When  Jesus  said,  "He 
that  heareth  my  words  — "  He  by  no  means  meant 
every  one  who  had  heard  them  with  outward  ears. 
"  Take  heed  how  ye  hear "  —  were  very  solemn  words 
in  His  mouth.  "He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the 
Father"  —  was  very  far  from  true  of  every  one  who 
had  seen  Him:  there  are  very  different  kinds  of  seeing. 
The  function  of  the  promised  Holy  Ghost  was  to  be 
that  He  should  "take  of  the  things  of  Jesus,  and  show 
them  unto  us."  He  was  to  give  us  eyes  to  see,  and  ears 
to  hear,  and  hearts  to  understand,  and  minds  to  know. 
The  Holy  Ghost  in  us  is  our  subjective  qualification 
to  receive  the  things  that  be  of  God,  and  that  are  ad- 
dressed, not  to  our  flesh,  but  to  our  spirit,  to  our  sense 
for  divine  things. 

Let  us  illustrate  by  the  actual  witness  of  one  of  the 
chief  witnesses.  Why  was  St.  John  so  chief  a  witness 
to  Jesus  and  the  resurrection?  Not  because  he  could 
better  see  or  hear  or  report  with  outer  senses  or  under- 
standing; but  because  he  had  the  deeper  inner  vision, 


Christianity  as  a  Witness  157 

and  saw  and  heard  what  to  others  was  invisible  and 
inaudible.  Hear  his  testimony:  "What  was  from  the 
beginning,  what  we  have  heard,  what  we  have  seen 
with  our  eyes,  what  we  beheld,  and  our  hands  handled, 
concerning  the  word  of  life  —  what  we  have  seen  and 
heard  declare  we  unto  you."  Every  term  is  used,  every 
qualification  enumerated,  of  the  purest  external  testi- 
mony, and  yet  it  is  evident  that  the  thing  testified  to 
is  accessible  only  to  the  most  inner  and  spiritual  senses 
or  perception.  All  that  our  Lord  had  said  or  done  on 
earth,  all  the  wonderful  things  that  had  happened, 
including  even  the  resurrection,  are  passed  by,  and  only 
that  is  testified  to  which  is  the,  to  most  eyes,  invisible 
import  and  significance  of  the  whole  matter. 

The  term  logos  or  "word"  ("word  of  life")  is  used 
here  in  a  different  way,  but  not  in  a  discordant  sense, 
from  that  in  which  it  appears  at  the  beginning  of  St. 
John's  Gospel.  In  that  it  is  used  personally,  in  this 
impersonally;  in  that  it  is  used  to  designate  the  Sub- 
ject of  the  Incarnation,  to  express  Who  Jesus  Christ  is; 
in  this  it  designates  the  subject  matter  of  the  incarna- 
tion, it  tells  what  Christ  is  —  not  only  in  Himself,  but 
also  in  us.  God's  eternal  and  essential  Word,  the  prin- 
ciple and  agent  of  all  revelation,  manifestation,  or 
expression  of  Himself  —  that  is,  of  all  that  is  —  is 
defined  here,  not  as  the  divine  Expresser,  but  simply 
as  the  divine  expression,  revelation,  or  manifestation 
of  Life.  He  is  here  to  be  studied,  not  as  Who  is  our 
life, but  as  what  is  our  life;  the  question  is  to  be,  not  how 
God  is  in  us  for  our  life,  but  what  our  life  is  as  God's. 


158  The  Reason  of  Life 

Our  immediate  subject  then  is  as  to  the  expression  of 
life,  how  life  manifests  or  evidences  itself  —  and  that 
especially  in  humanity,  whether  in  Jesus  Christ  as  its 
type  or  original,  or  in  us  as  participants  in  it  in  Him. 
Christianity  as  a  permanent  witness  is  witness  of  a 
permanent  thing:  it  is  not  transmitted  testimony  of 
a  Jesus  who  lived  or  of  a  resurrection  that  once  took 
place;  it  is  direct  evidence  of  a  Jesus  who  lives  and  of 
a  resurrection  that  is  continuously  taking  place.  It  is 
Jesus  as  Life  that  we  are  witnesses  of;  it  is  the  resur- 
rection as  the  divine  victory  of  human  life  that  we  are 
here  to  bear  testimony  to. 

The  truth  of  Adam  is  altogether  independent  of  the 
historicity  of  such  an  individual  man.  Adam  is  only  the 
root  and  type  of  our  common  or  universal  humanity. 
He  stands  for  our  common  nature  and  our  common 
condition  by  or  in  nature.  We  express  simply  a  com- 
mon or  universal  fact  of  nature  when  we  say :  In  Adam 
we  all  sin,  and  in  Adam  we  all  die.  That  may  be  an 
inadequate  account  of  the  historical  origin  or  cause, 
but  it  adequately  describes  the  fact  of  sin  and  death. 
Now  Jesus  Christ  stands  for  an  equally  generic  and 
universal  fact  and  principle  in  humanity,  the  principle 
of  God  in  it,  and  of  eternal  life.  If  there  were  not  in 
man  an  original  principle  and  potentiality  of  all  that 
Christ  means,  Christ  could  not  become  in  us  all  that 
He  does.  "Whom  God  foreknew  He  predestinated 
to  be  conformed  to  the  image  of  His  Son."  That 
means  that  God,  in  His  eternal  foreknowledge  and 
fore-purpose  of  humanity,  implanted  in  it  the  potency 


Christianity  as  a  Witness  159 

and  promise  of  becoming,  through  unity  with  Himself, 
all  that  humanity  has  actually  become  in  Christ, 
through  His  love,  grace,  and  fellowship  in  and  with  it. 
This  is  involved  in  the  truth  of  our  sonship  to  God  by 
nature.  We  are  not  all  products  of  nature;  we  are, 
in  highest  part,  children  of  God;  and  His  "seed"  in  us, 
our  natural  derivation  from  and  kinship  with  Him,  is 
in  itself  potency  and  promise  of  our  becoming  of  one 
life  with  Him. 

In  the  first  place  then,  Jesus  Christ  means  the  inner 
man  potential  in  every  man.  But  in  the  second  place, 
He  means  that  inner  and  merely  potential  man 
quickened  and  regenerate  by  the  —  not  merely  im- 
manent, but  transcendent  —  action  of  Himself  upon 
it,  and  become  the  "new  man."  By  transcendent 
action  is  meant  action  not  naturally  transmitted,  but 
personally  communicated.  The  media  of  personal 
communication  are  invariably  Word  and  Spirit  —  the 
Word,  by  expression  to  the  understanding,  and  the 
Spirit,  by  appeal  to  and  influence  on  the  sensibilities, 
affections,  and  will.  The  function  of  the  Word  is 
the  conveyance  of  truth  or  reality  to  us;  of  the  Spirit, 
the  quickening  of  apprehension,  reception,  and  life 
in  us.  The  evidences  of  life  are,  the  passing  or  death 
of  the  "old  man"  or  "old  Adam,"  of  subjection  to 
sin  and  death,  and  the  birth  and  life  in  us  of  the 
Christ  or  "new  man,"  of  the  likeness  and  life  of 
God  in  us.  Jesus  Christ  is  described  by  St.  Peter 
as  having  "brought  us  to  God"  —  how?  By  being 
"put  to  death  in  the  flesh,  but  quickened  or  made 


160  The  Reason  of  Life 

alive  in  the  spirit."  Flesh  and  Spirit  had  become — 
probably  chiefly  through  the  thought  of  St.  Paul  — 
synonyms  for  all  that  was  respectively  to  be  "put  off" 
and  "  put  on "  by  the  supreme  double  act  of  the  Death 
and  the  Resurrection  of  our  Lord.  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  our  Lord  had  not  that  which  was  to  be 
put  off  in  the  flesh,  as  well  as  needed  or  was  in  want  of 
that  which  was  to  be  put  on  in  the  spirit.  If  it  were 
not  so  with  Him,  then  would  He  not  be  constituted 
and  qualified  to  accomplish  in  our  humanity  that  in 
which  its  salvation  consists  and  upon  which  it  depends : 
that  is,  the  putting  off  the  flesh  and  putting  on  the  spirit; 
putting  off  nature  and  self  in  their  deficiency  and  in- 
sufficiency, and  putting  on  God  as  alone  all  sufficient 
for  holiness,  righteousness,  and  life.  Jesus  Christ  did 
not  put  off  sin  and  death,  as  having  been  Himself, 
personally,  involved  in  them.  He  put  them  off  by 
the  act  and  fact  of  not  having  been  involved  in  them: 
that  is,  by  the  act  and  fact  of  having  overcome  and 
abolished  them.  But  He  overcame  them  only  in  the 
human  way  of  denying,  mortifying,  and  crucifying 
the  nature  and  self  which,  even  in  Him,  were  subject 
to  sin  and  death,  because  incapable  of  holiness  and  life, 
and  putting  on  God,  who  alone  in  us  is  sufficient,  and 
is  our  sufficiency,  for  these. 

The  symbolical  language  —  in  so  far  as  it  is  so  —  of 
the  inner  and  the  outer  man,  the  old  and  the  new  man, 
Adam  and  Christ,  the  flesh  and  the  spirit,  death  and 
resurrection,  can  never  be  improved  upon  or  dispensed 
with  in  Christianity.  Not  only  because  they  are  the 


Christianity  as  a  Witness  161 

best  possible  symbols  of  facts  and  realities  in  human 
nature  and  experience,  but  because  they  are  themselves 
more  and  truer  than  mere  symbols.  They  are  a  lan- 
guage that  is  translatable,  and  must  be  translated,  into 
all  languages,  because  they  are  the  exact  expression 
of  all  higher  human  life. 

Witness,  then,  to  Jesus  and  the  resurrection  is  noth- 
ing if  it  is  not  witness  to  a  present  Person  and  a  present 
and  actual  experience.  As  to  the  present  Person:  the 
tendency  emphasized  in  these  days  is  to  divorce  the 
historical  Jesus  from  the  symbolical  Christ;  the  next 
step  to  which  would  be  to  dispense  with  the  symbol, 
and  thus  to  reduce  God,  and  Truth,  and  Life  from 
Persons  to  abstract  ideas  and  principles.  Then  will 
be  the  end  of  religion;  for  religion  is  only  between 
persons;  the  relation  with  ideas  and  principles  may  be 
for  us  science  or  art  or  philosophy;  it  may  give  us 
ethics,  but  it  cannot  be  religion.  When  God  has  be- 
come the  mere  personification  of  our  own  conception 
of  perfect  truth,  order,  and  goodness;  when  Jesus 
Christ  has  become  the  mere  symbol  of  our  own  ideal 
of  truth,  beauty,  and  goodness,  or  God,  incarnate  in 
us,  then  these  objects  of  our  worship  will  be  simply 
reduced  to  ourselves  and  the  creatures  of  our  own 
minds.  And  when  we  have  really  discovered  that,  we 
shall  cease  to  worship  them.  Just  because  truth, 
beauty,  and  goodness  are  personal,  and  only  in  persons, 
or  not  at  all  —  not  to  know  them  eternal  in  God,  or 
incarnate  in  Christ,  is  to  know  them  nowhere  except  in 
ourselves.  We  cannot  speak  of  them  as  present  or 
lie 


162  The  Reason  of  Life 

operative  in  the  universe  as  a  whole,  or  anywhere  in  it 
outside  ourselves;  for  we  know  none,  and  nothing, 
outside  ourselves  in  whom  or  in  which  they  can  be. 
To  speak  of  Goodness  as  an  ultimate  principle,  or  a 
principle  at  all,  in  the  Universe,  is  to  assume  an  objec- 
tive or  ultimate  Personality  in  the  universe. 

I  am  perfectly  aware  of  the  ignorance  and  inade- 
quacy of  our  ascription  of  personality  to  the  Ultimate 
Principle  of  the  universe;  but  the  reality  in  that  Princi- 
ple, as  is  freely  admitted  by  the  truest  agnostics,  must 
infinitely  transcend,  and  in  nothing  fall  short  of,  the 
personality  we  ascribe,  and  must  also  include  it.  There 
can  be  nothing  in  us  that  is  not  in  It.  The  ablest  and 
devoutest  Ethical  Culturist  I  know  —  agnostic  as  to 
anything  beyond  that  —  worships,  more  devoutly  than 
I,  precisely  What  I  do  —  but  not  Whom  I  do.  If,  as 
he  believes,  What  he  worships  is  more  and  higher  than 
Whom  I  worship  —  he  would  not  lower  nor  limit  It  to 
my  conception  or  designation  of  It — then  I  believe  that 
we  worship,  not  only  the  same  Thing,  but  the  same 
Person.  And  I  think  that  I  lose  nothing,  and  he  would 
lose  nothing  in  going  as  far  as  our  limitations  will  per- 
mit, and  ascribing  to  the  supreme  Object  of  our  worship 
at  least  personality  and  personal  relation  with  our- 
selves —  whatever  more  we  may  be  failing  to  ascribe. 
If  he  were  not,  implicitly,  worshipping  a  Person,  he 
would  not  be  worshipping  at  all,  and  I  believe  that  he 
is,  quite  as  certainly  as  that  I  am. 

Seeing,  then,  in  Jesus  Christ  all  that  I  do  —  the  divine 
predestination  and  potentiality  of  my  Self,  as  of  all 


Christianity  as  a  Witness  163 

human  selfhood;  myself,  not  only  thus  purposed  and 
promised,  but  in  Him  realized  and  fulfilled;  the  outer 
man  in  me  displaced  by  the  inner,  the  old  by  the  new, 
the  flesh  by  the  spirit,  the  Adam  by  the  Christ,  nature 
and  self  in  me  by  God  —  Jesus  Christ  is  to  me,  not  a 
name,  nor  a  memory  or  tradition,  nor  an  idea  or  senti- 
ment, nor  a  personification,  but  a  living  and  personal 
reality,  presence,  and  power.  He  is  God  for  me,  to  me, 
in  me,  and  myself  in  God.  Wherein  else  do  we  see  God, 
know  God,  possess  God  than  as  we  are  in  Him,  and  He 
in  us?  And  wherein  else  are  we  so  in  Him  and  He  in  us, 
as  in  Jesus  Christ?  If  God  is  unknowable  in  Himself, 
whether  as  immanent  in,  beneath  and  behind,  or  tran- 
scendent above  all  nature  and  all  else,  where  does  He 
become  knowable  but  in  His  Word  to  us  and  His 
Spirit  in  us :  and  that  is  what  we  mean  by  Jesus  Christ, 
and  what  He  is,  to  and  in  us.  If  God  is  not  a  Presence, 
a  Reality,  and  a  Power  in  Him,  He  is  so  nowhere. 
And  if  we  are  not  to  worship  Him  there,  we  worship 
Him  not  at  all.  "There  is  none  other  Name  under 
heaven,  given  among  men,  wherein  we  must  be  saved." 
And  "in  His  name"  means  "in  Him,"  and  "in  Him" 
means  "in  His  death  and  resurrection." 

Our  relation  to,  our  interest  and  actual  participation 
in  the  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ,  is  no 
mystery  or  magic.  Assume  that  Christ  is  in  fact  the 
Power  of  God  unto  salvation,  God  in  us  unto  and  in 
our  actual  salvation,  our  holiness,  our  righteousness, 
our  life,  and  so  our  redemption  from  sin  and  our  resur- 
rection from  death;  assume  that  through  faith  we 


164  The  Reason  of  Life 

experience  enough  to  know  this:  we  have  the  earnest 
and  proof  of  it  in  ourselves;  that  in  hope  we  appro- 
priate and  possess  in  anticipation  all  that  we  see  and 
know  in  Christ;  —  if  both  the  objective  and  subjective 
facts  be  actually  so,  is  it  either  magic  or,  from  the 
highest  point  of  view,  even  miracle,  that  in  Jesus  we 
should  see  God  and  ourselves  at  one,  and  that  His 
death  should  be  our  redemption,  and  His  resurrection 
our  eternal  life? 

It  will  of  course  be  asked :  "  Yes,  but  is  it  not  enough 
that  the  Christ  shall  be  the  ideal  or  spiritual  Symbol 
of  all  that,  as  Adam  is  of  all  that  goes  before?  "  I  admit 
that  He  is  the  symbol  of  it  all,  but  not  the  mere  sym- 
bol. By  mere  symbol  I  mean  just  that  which  is  actually 
meant  by  those  who  contend  for  it:  a  sign  that  is  not 
the  thing,  that  represents  only,  and  is  not  what  it 
represents.  The  question  is,  Whose,  and  what  kind  of, 
symbol  is  it?  If  it  is  man's,  and  expresses  his  immanent 
conception  or  idea  or  ideal  of  God  and  himself,  and  the 
relation  between,  then  it  is  only  a  sign,  and  by  no 
means  necessarily  the  thing  signified.  If,  on  the  con- 
trary, it  is  God's,  and  the  direct  manifestation  and 
expression  from  Him  of  Himself  and  man,  and  the 
relation  between,  then  faith  is  justified  in  taking  it  for 
no  mere  sign,  but  the  Thing  signified,  and  hope,  in 
appropriating  to  itself  the  whole  presence  and  power 
and  reality  of  it.  So,  Jesus  Christ  is  to  us  no  mere  idea, 
or  sentiment,  or  aspiration,  desire,  or  hope  of  our  own, 
but  God's  truth  and  reality  of  our  at-one-ment  with 
Him,  our  redemption  from  sin,  our  resurrection  from 


Christianity  as  a  Witness  165 

death.  It  is  only  so  in  faith  and  hope,  and  very  imper- 
fectly so  in  fact,  from  the  nature  of  the  thing,  and  of  us 
the  subjects  of  it.  The  thing  is,  our  personal  and 
spiritual  oneness  with  God,  redemption  from  sin,  per- 
fection in  holiness,  righteousness,  and  life.  This  is 
something  which  we  have,  not  simply  to  receive,  but  to 
accomplish  and  attain  of  ourselves.  It  can  be  done 
only  under  the  conditions  and  through  the  experiences 
of  our  life  as  it  is :  the  conditions  have  to  be  met  and 
overcome,  and  the  experiences,  not  only  to  be  endured 
and  survived,  but  recognized  and  used  as  divine  means 
and  instruments  of  our  making  and  raising  to  the  full 
stature  of  ourselves.  Nature  is  only  the  raw  material 
of  ourselves,  and  is  incomplete  without  our  own  action 
and  part  in  it.  Ourselves  are  deficient  and  insuffi- 
cient, and  can  accomplish  our  part  in  fulfilling  our 
nature  and  realizing  ourselves,  only  in  union  and 
communion,  both  immanent  and  transcendent,  both 
physical  and  personal,  both  natural  and  spiritual,  with 
the  All  Who  is  God,  and  in  the  fulness  of  that  realized 
relationship  with  Him  which  is  Jesus  Christ.  This  can 
be  only  gradual  and  progressive,  but  the  condition  of 
it,  the  only  possibility,  means,  or  assurance  of  it,  is  the 
certain  knowledge  of  God's  part  in  it,  upon  which  faith 
and  hope  may  depend  as  absolutely  as  our  actual  and 
natural  dependence  is  upon  it.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
say  now,  that  the  Christ  is  enough  as  an  ideal  symbol 
of  our  own  creation,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  Christ 
was  manifested,  not  in  thought  only,  or  in  word  only, 
but  in  very  deed  and  truth,  in  the  personal,  historical, 


166  The  Reason  of  Life 

human  life,  and  essentially  in  the  death  and  resur- 
rection, of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

Jesus  Christ  is  to  us,  now  and  always,  all  that  He 
means;  and  what  He  means  to  us  is  Life:  The  Life  was 
manifested,  and  we  have  seen  it  and  bear  witness  to  it. 
We  speak  that  we  do  know,  and  testify  that  we  have 
seen.  The  Life  is  the  life  of  God;  but  it  is  the  life  of 
God  as  ours,  and  in  us.  The  whole  description  of  it, 
in  Jesus  or  in  us,  is  the  description  of  a  genuinely  and 
essentially  human  life.  It  is  no  less,  of  course,  a  divine 
life,  a  life  of  divine  love  and  grace  and  fellowship  with 
us,  of  God  Himself  in  us.  But  it  is  equally  a  genuinely 
human  life,  a  life  of  human  faith  and  hope  and  love. 
As  Jesus  means  and  is  the  life  of  God  in  man,  so  the 
resurrection  means  and  is  the  victory  of  human  life  in 
God  —  the  indestructibility  and  invincibility  of  faith, 
hope,  and  love,  of  God  and  the  life  of  God  in  us  through 
these.  .  . 

Let  us  take  the  very  earliest  description  of  this: 
"Whom  God  raised  up,  having  loosed  the  pangs  of 
death:  because  it  was  not  possible  that  He  should  be 
holden  of  it."  Why  was  it  impossible  that  Jesus 
should  be  holden  of  death?  Is  it  because  He  was  God? 
It  is  absurd  to  speak  of  the  possibility  or  impossibility 
of  God's  being  holden  of  death.  The  ground  and  cause 
of  the  impossibility  must  be  sought  in  something  in 
Jesus  as  man.  There  is  neither  point  nor  pertinence 
in  the  saying,  if  it  does  not  mean  the  invincibility  and 
indestructibleness  of  the  divine  life  in  the  man  Jesus 
—  and,  through  Him,  in  humanity.  The  life  that 


Christianity  as  a  Witness  167 

comes  down  from  God  as  Love,  Grace,  and  Fellowship, 
and  lives  in  man  as  faith,  hope,  and  love,  is  stronger 
than  sin,  stronger  than  death,  is  more  than  conqueror, 
overcomes  the  world,  and  puts  all  enemies  under  its 
feet.  In  Jesus  the  Woman's  Seed  bruises  the  serpent's 
head;  the  Seed  of  Abraham,  the  inheritor  and  perfector 
of  his  faith,  accomplishes  and  gives  to  the  world  the 
blessedness  of  a  divine  righteousness;  the  Son  of  David 
sits  upon  the  throne  of  a,  in  Him  realized,  and  in  us 
realizable,  kingdom  of  God  upon  earth. 

To  see  that  the  story  of  the  resurrection  is  that  of 
the  predestined  victory  of  human  faith  over  all  adverse 
conditions,  influences,  or  powers;  the  putting  all  ene- 
mies under  the  feet  of  redeemed  and  risen  humanity; 
—  we  have  only  to  go  on  to  St.  Peter's  account  of  why 
Jesus  could  not  be  holden  of  death.  "For — ,"  says 
he,  and  then  proceeds  to  put  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus 
the  typical  and  prophetic  experience  of  David.  What 
was  only  figuratively,  hyperbolically  or  poetically,  true 
of  David,  has  become  actual  truth  or  fact  in  Jesus. 
All  true  faith  is  in  part  a  conquest  of  death:  David, 
in  extremis,  had  gone  down  into  the  grave,  and  by  the 
grace  of  God  had  come  up  again  —  just  as  St.  Paul 
describes  himself  as  having  done  —  and  describes  the 
experience  as  follows: 

I  beheld  the  Lord  always  before  my  face; 

For  he  is  on  my  right  hand,  that  I  should  not  be  moved: 

Therefore  my  heart  was  glad,  and  my  tongue  rejoiced; 

Moreover  my  flesh  too  shall  dwell  in  hope; 

Because  tbou  shalt  not  leave  my  soul  in  Hades, 


168  The  Reason  of  Life 

Neither  wilt  thou  give  thy  holy  one  to  see  corruption. 

Thou  madest  known  to  me  the  ways  of  life; 

Thou  shalt  make  me  full  of  gladness  with  thy  countenance. 

What  could  more  truly  or  exactly  describe  the  accom- 
plished triumph  of  the  resurrection,  with  which  every 
deepest  spiritual  experience  has  at  least  the  principle 
in  common,  and  is  therefore  in  its  measure  a  type  and 
prophecy  of  it? 

What  was  put  into  the  mouth  of  David  as  prophecy, 
as  assurance  of  the  ultimate  working  out  of  a  principle, 
the  anticipative  operation  of  which  he  experienced  in 
himself,  we  hear  from  the  mouth  of  Jesus  in  fulfilment 
of  the  prophecy.  And  we  now  can  utter  it  in  Him,  no 
longer  in  mere  human  aspiration,  or  prophetic  anticipa- 
tion, but  in  full  assurance  of  divine  manifestation  and 
demonstration,  that  all  that  the  Prince  and  Author  of 
our  life,  and  Finisher  of  our  faith,  has  accomplished 
for  us  in  Himself,  He  will  accomplish  in  us  through 
ourselves. 


XIV 
THE  BLOOD  THAT  CLEANSETH 

As  has  been  previously  assumed  in  connection  with 
the  First  Epistle  of  St.  John,  that  Epistle  treats  Chris- 
tianity more  in  its  positive  aspect  as  a  Life  of  God  in 
Christ,  and  our  participation  in  that  life,  than  in  its 
negative  aspect  as  a  sacrifice  for  and  a  redemption  from 
sin.  But  this  latter  aspect  is  by  no  means  ignored  — 
indeed,  is  very  distinctly  presupposed  and  assumed. 
The  position  the  Epistle  would  seem  to  suggest,  if  not 
positively  occupy,  is  tnat  of  warning  against  claiming 
an  interest  in  the  objective  redemption  of  our  Lord, 
through  His  death,  without  or  apart  from  a  subjective 
participation  with  Him  in  His  life.  There  is  in  the 
position  an  unconscious  kinship  with  that  held  by  St. 
Paul  (Romans  V.  10):  "If,  while  we  were  enemies,  we 
were  reconciled  to  God  through  the  death  of  His  Son, 
much  more,  being  reconciled,  shall  we  be  saved  in  His 
life."  St.  John  would  say,  "  If  we  are  not  walking  in 
the  light,  then  are  we  not  in  the  life  of  God  in  Christ; 
and  if  we  are  not  in  the  life,  then  we  cannot  claim  any 
part  in  the  redemption  or  reconciliation  through  the 
death  of  Jesus  Christ."  The  argument  is  a  posteriori, 
from  effect  to  cause,  from  evidence  to  fact:  If  we  are 
actually  and  manifestly  walking  in  the  light,  then  know 

169 


170  The  Reason  of  Life 

we  that  we  have  that  Life  which  is  the  only  true  light 
of  men;  and  if  we  have  the  life,  then  know  we  that, 
through  our  right  attitude  and  relation  to  it,  the  blood 
of  Jesus  Christ  has  expunged  our  sin  and  at-one-d  us 
with  God.  Each  stage  or  step  of  our  actual  redemption 
proves  the  preceding  one,  and  so  we  reason  back  from 
the  last  to  the  first. 

If  we  say  either  that  we  have  not  sinned  or  that  we 
have  not  sin,  we  show  an  elemental  ignorance  or  un- 
consciousness of  the  first  obstacle  and  discovery  of 
the  spiritual  life  within  us.  Holiness  manifests  itself 
to  us  only  in  the  opposition  to  sin,  and  realizes  itself 
in  us  only  in  the  overcoming  of  sin:  he  who  does 
not  know  sin  has  not  begun  to  know  holiness;  and 
by  holiness  we  mean,  the  spirit,  nature,  and  life  of 
God  in  us. 

If,  to  ourselves  and  to  God,  "we  confess  our  sins" 

—  if  we  stand  in  the  only  possible  true  relation  and 
attitude  to  sin,  that  of  a  genuine  and  real  repentance 

—  then  is  God  "faithful  and  righteous  to  forgive  us 
our   sins."     Forgiveness,   either  under  or  upon   any 
other  condition,  is  a  moral  impossibility,  alike  for  God 
and  for  us.    Forgiveness  here  means  remission  or  put- 
ting away;  certain  kinds  of  consequences  or  penalties 
of  sin  might  be  remitted  without  regard  to  the  attitude 
of  the  sinner  to  his  sin.     These  are  mostly  human  and 
artificial    consequences;    for   the  most  part,   natural, 
and  certainly  spiritual,  consequences  or  penalties  are 
irremediable  except  upon  necessary  conditions.    You 
might,  after  a  human  fashion,  remit  the  punishment 


The  Blood  that  Cleanseth  171 

for  sin,  or  alter  the  outward  status  of  the  sinner,  treat 
him  as  not  being  one,  regardless  of  his  own  disposition 
toward  his  sin;  but  there  can  be  no  real  or  divine 
pardon  or  forgiveness  or  remission  of  sin,  or  making 
a  sinner  not  a  sinner,  without  the  full  cooperation  of 
the  sinner  himself  in  the  act,  and  in  the  attitude 
of  God  in  the  act.  To  God,  and  to  the  real  penitent, 
the  true  sequel,  condemnation,  judgment,  and  penalty 
of  sin  is  in  the  sin  itself,  and  in  no  mere  external  acci- 
dent or  circumstance  of  it.  The  only  real  pardon  or 
forgiveness  or  remission  for  it,  is  the  putting  away  of 
itself :  and  the  putting  away  of  the  sin  itself  is  possible 
only  through  the  sinner  himself.  I  say  "  through,"  not 
"by";  it  can  be  put  away  only  by  God,  through  the 
sinner;  but  equally  it  can  be  put  away  by  God  only 
through  the  sinner.  That  is  why  the  action  of  divine 
grace  is  never  severed  from  the  condition  of  human 
repentance  and  faith. 

But  now,  while  there  can  be  no  divine  putting  away 
of  sin  that  is  not  conditioned  by  and  upon  the  sinner's 
putting  it  away,  it  is  not  only  possible  but  rational 
and  natural  that  God's  putting  away  should  both  ante- 
date and  condition  the  sinner's.  In  all  human  action, 
conduct,  character,  or  life,  that  is  personal,  moral,  or 
spiritual,  attitude  or  disposition  must  precede  action, 
and  action  must  precede  performance  or  accomplish- 
ment. Now  if  a  man,  through  the  prevenient  grace  of 
God,  assumes  the  right  initial  attitude  toward  his  own 
sin,  of  repentance,  and  toward  God's  holiness,  of  faith, 
hope,  and  love  —  God  is  faithful  and  right  to  see  and 


172  The  Reason  of  Life 

recognize  in  that  initial  disposition  the  beginning  of 
action,  and  in  action,  with  His  help,  the  pledge  and 
promise  of  accomplishment  or  fulfilment.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  only  the  evidence,  assurance,  and 
experience  on  the  man's  part  that  God  will  so  accept 
and  treat  his  most  elementary  disposition,  and  takes 
what  he  means,  and  would  be,  for  what  he  so  infinitely 
as  yet  is  not  —  it  is  only  that,  I  say,  that  can  possibly 
encourage  and  enable  the  man  to  put  his  disposition 
into  action,  and  to  complete  his  action  into  accomplish- 
ment and  attainment. 

That  is  what  we  might  call  the  divine  philosophy 
of  the  attitude  which  St.  John  ascribes  to  God:  If, 
obeying  the  motions  of  His  Spirit,  we  will  take  up  the 
true  attitude  toward  our  sin,  and  toward  His  love 
and  grace  and  holiness,  then  He  will  be  faithful  and 
righteous  on  His  part  to  more  than  meet  our  least 
movement  toward  Him.  Indeed  any  movement  on 
our  part  is  already  His  motion  in  us: 

"Every  inmost  aspiration  is  God's  Angel  undefiled, 
And  in  every  "O,  my  Father,"  slumbers  deep  a  "Here,  my  Child." 

On  our  part,  "confession  of  sins"  supposes  and  in- 
cludes a  real  sense  and  consciousness  of  sin,  the  conse- 
quent need  and  desire  of  both  pardon  and  cleansing, 
and  faith  in  the  love  and  grace  and  fellowship  of  God 
for  these  ends.  On  God's  part,  He  recognizes  in  this 
disposition  —  which  is  itself  His  gift  —  the  condition 
upon  which  His  pardoning  and  cleansing  grace  is  possi- 


The  Blood  that  Cleanseth  173 

hie,  or  is  operative  and  effectual  in  us;  He  accepts  the 
attitude  or  disposition  a  quo  for  the  end  ad  quern,  and 
treats  our  faith  and  hope  as  though  they  were  attain- 
ment and  possession. 

What,  however,  seems  to  be  the  desire  and  intention 
of  the  Apostle  and  the  Epistle  is  to  connect  inseparably, 
if  not  identify,  the  grace  of  pardon  and  the  grace  of 
cleansing  —  what  we  have  divided  into  the  two  parts 
of  justification  and  sanctification.  The  first  of  these 
is  meaningless  apart  from'  the  second;  the  second  is 
impossible  apart  from  the  first :  it  is  only  in  God's  both 
pardoning  and  cleansing  love,  grace,  and  fellowship, 
that  we  can  both  receive  and  accomplish  the  holiness, 
righteousness,  and  life,  which  is  the  end  and  the  sub- 
stance of  all  our  salvation.  So  the  Apostle  would  say: 
"  If  we  are  walking  in  the  light,  then  are  we  living  in 
the  Life;  and  then  —  the  blood  of  Jesus,  the  Son  of 
God,  not  only  justifies  or  acquits  us  of  all  condemnation 
or  guilt,  but  is  actually  sanctifying  or  cleansing  us  from 
all  sin."  This  appears  in  the  further  progress  of  the 
argument  —  if  so  subtle  and  delicate  a  sequence  of 
thought  or  life  can  be  called  an  argument.  "My  little 
children,  these  things  write  I  unto  you,  that  ye  sin  not." 
The  end  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is,  that  we  sin  not  at 
all:  that  there  be  no  longer  any  sin  in  us:  Christ  has 
abolished  sin,  not  only  in  Himself,  but  in  us.  So  He 
has  —  but,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  potentially, 
not  yet  actually:  in  God's  gracious  act  and  provision, 
and  in  our  appropriating  and  anticipative  faith,  but 
not  yet  in  the  accomplished  fact  of  assimilation  and 


174  The  Reason  of  Life 

attainment  on  our  part.  That  is  a  necessary  separation 
and  sequence:  what  we  have  ourselves  to  be  and  do, 
must  be  ours  to  be  accomplished  and  to  become,  before 
it  can  be  ours  accomplished  and  actually  become. 
Therefore,  while  the  Apostle  insists  that  "  the  blood  of 
Christ,"  or  "being  in  God,"  must  mean  and  must  be 
—  sin  abolished,  and  holiness  possessed;  he  knows  that 
this,  in  us,  must  be  a  process  of  time  and  change,  and 
so  recognizes  that  while  the  determining  and  ultimate 
principle  of  our  life  will  be  holiness,  and  therefore 
sinlessness,  sin  will  not  be  instantaneously  dead,  and 
will  recur. 

Therefore  he  adds:  "And  if  one  sins,  we  have  an 
Advocate  with  the  Father,  Jesus  Christ,  the  righteous: 
and  He  is  the  propitiation  for  our  sins."  This  opens 
to  us  the  whole  ground  of  our  spiritual  and  moral  status 
or  standing  with  God,  as  held  by  St.  John,  in  harmony 
with  all  Apostolic  teaching.  Jesus  Christ  is  Himself 
"The  Righteous,"  or  the  righteous  One:  He  is  the 
"righteousness  of  God  revealed":  at  once,  God  our 
Righteousness,  and  humanity  righteous  through  God 
in  it.  Jesus  Christ  is  both  parts  or  sides  in  the  unity 
of  God  and  man,  both  gratia  gratians  and  gratia  gratiata, 
the  divine  grace  that  graces  or  confers,  and  the  human 
grace  received  and  shared.  The  human  righteousness 
of  Jesus  Christ,  which  alone  is  or  can  become  ours,  was 
humanly  both  received  and  wrought  by  Himself:  it 
was  a  righteousness  alike  of  perfect  faith  and  of  perfect 
obedience.  It  was  a  righteousness,  of  which  His 
"blood"  was  the  sole  condition,  and  is  the  only 


The  Blood  that  Cleanseth  175 

symbol.  The  Holy  of  Holies  could  be  entered  only 
with  the  blood  of  the  Offerer  up  of  Himself  without 
spot  to  God.  Nothing  short  of  that  perfect  attitude 
toward  sin  which  is  death  at  once  to  it  and  from  it, 
and  that  perfect  attitude  toward  holiness  which  is  the 
life  of  God  Himself  in  us,  constitutes  the  righteousness 
that  Jesus  Christ  was,  and  the  righteousness  that  He 
gives.  His  blood  was,  not  only  His  own  actual  death 
to  sin,  but  must  be  no  less  ours  also. 

It  remains  to  examine,  from  St.  John's  point  of  view, 
the  exact  meaning  of  the  declaration  that  Jesus  Christ, 
the  righteous,  was  the  "propitiation  for  our  sins." 
We  may  first  correlate  it  with  similar  expressions  from 
other  apostolic  sources.  St.  Paul  tells  us  (2  Cor.  V.  19) 
how  that  "God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world 
unto  Himself,  not  reckoning  unto  them  their  tres- 
passes." This  reconciliation  the  Authorized  Version 
(Rom.  V.  11)  calls  "the  atonement"  —  manifestly  in 
the  sense  of  at-one-ment.  "God  in  Christ"  in  itself 
means  the  reconciliation  of  God  and  the  world,  or  their 
at-one-ment :  it  is  no  mere  true  expression  of  the  thing, 
but  the  Thing  Itself  realized  and  accomplished.  God 
comes  to  His  own  in  the  world,  and  the  world  comes  to 
itself  in  God  —  both  alike  in  Jesus  Christ.  That 
which  is  fact  accomplished  in  Christ,  is  fact  accom- 
plishing, and  to  be  accomplished  in  us  in  Christ.  And 
the  process  of  accomplishment  is  this :  Upon  repentance 
from  sin  and  faith  in  God,  God  sees  and  receives  the 
sinner  in  Christ.  He  no  longer  reckons  or  imputes  to 
him  the  sin  which  he  himself  repudiates  and  disowns, 


176  The  Reason  of  Life 

but  invests  him  with,  as  his  own,  the  holiness  or  right- 
eousness which  he  sees  and  appropriates  to  himself  by 
faith  in  Christ.  That  so-called  imputation  is  the  divine 
method  of  giving  or  imparting  to  the  sinner  the  holiness 
and  righteousness  which  he  has  not  and  cannot  have  in 
himself,  except  by  the  divine  impartation. 

The  merging  and  identifying  of  our  repentance,  and 
whole  subsequent  relation  to  sin,  into  and  with  that 
act  of  Jesus  Christ  which  was  in  fact  the  death  of  sin 
and  His  own  human  death  to  sin,  is  explicable  and 
comprehensible  only  as  we  see  in  Jesus  Christ  the  revela- 
tion and  manifestation  of  God's  grace  in  all  humanity 
—  all,  that  is,  that  through  Jesus  Christ  believes  and 
accepts :  the  grace  which  will  in  us  all  complete  repen- 
tance into  death  to  sin,  as  it  completes  faith  into  life 
in  God.  The  function  of  faith  is  to  know  in  ourselves 
"the  exceeding  greatness  of  God's  power  to  usward  who 
believe,  according  to  that  strength  of  His  might  which 
He  wrought  in  Christ,  when  He  raised  Him  from  the 
dead."  Jesus  Christ  was  manifested  "for  our  sake, 
who  through  Him  are  believers  in  God,  which  raised 
Him  from  the  dead,  and  gave  Him  glory;  so  that  our 
faith  and  hope  might  be  in  God."  It  is  not  that  Jesus 
Christ  was  an  individual  sample  or  example  of  human 
salvation.  Christ  is  in  fact  as  universal  and  generic 
as,  symbolically,  Adam  is.  He  is  God  in  humanity 
and  in  every  man  who  repents  and  believes.  His 
death  and  resurrection  are  not  only  representatively 
but  potentially  those  of  every  man,  and  actually  those 
of  every  man  who  thoroughly  believes.  "We  judge, 


The  Blood  that  Cleanseth  177 

that  one  died  for  all,  therefore  all  died;  and  he  died 
for  all "  —  not  that  all  need  not  die,  or  may  be  merely 
pardoned:  but  that  they  may  so  truly  die  —  "that 
they  should  no  longer  live  unto  themselves,  but  unto 
him  who,  for  their  sakes  died  and  rose  again."  Death 
in  all  these  connections  must  be  taken  in  the  sense  in 
which  it  is  manifestly  intended:  not  the  physical  fact, 
but  a  spiritual  and  moral  act,  the  death  of  the  Adam 
in  us  through  the  resurrection  and  life  of  the  Christ. 
"If  any  man  is  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new  creation:  the 
old  things  are  passed  away;  behold,  new  things  have 
come  to  pass:"  he  is  dead  in  the  flesh,  and  risen  and 
alive  in  the  spirit.  St.  Paul  shows  everywhere  the 
same  solicitude  that  St.  John  does,  that  Jesus  should 
not  be  instead  of  us,  exclusively,  but  for  us,  inclusively : 
that  His  death  should  not  be  instead  of  our  death,  but 
should  be  our  death. 

At  Rom.  III.  25  God  is  said  to  have  "  set  forth  Jesus 
Christ  to  be  a  propitiation,  through  faith,  by  His 
blood."  First  as  to  Jesus  Himself,  His  way  into  the 
Holy  of  Holies,  of  utter  conquest  of  sin  and  oneness 
with  God,  was  with  blood — through  the  torn  veil  of  His 
flesh.  As  St.  Peter  expresses  it:  "Christ  also  suffered 
for  sins  once,  that  He  might  bring  us  unto  God;  being 
put  to  death  in  the  flesh,  but  quickened  in  the  spirit." 
His  act  of  utter  holiness  —  that  is,  of  perfect  love, 
service  and  sacrifice  —  destroyed  the  sin  that  separated 
us  from  God,  and  so  "  brought  us"  to  God.  "We  were 
redeemed"  —  to  holiness,  from  the  vanity  or  emptiness 
of  our  life  apart  from  God  —  "with  precious  blood,  as 
13 


178  The  Reason  of  Life 

of  a  lamb  without  blemish  or  spot,  the  blood  of  Christ." 
Such  is  Jesus  Christ,  and  such  was  that  act  of  human 
redemption,  that  in  Him  and  in  it  we  all  stand,  not 
merely,  I  repeat,  representatively,  but  potentially  re- 
deemed. And  nothing  stands  between  us  and  our  actual 
and  eternal  redemption  but  the  one  condition,  without 
which  it  cannot  act  either  upon  or  in  us,  the  condition  of 
our  faith  in  and  appropriation  of  it.  Jesus  Christ  is  our 
propitiation  in  the  absolute  sense  of  our  ultimate  per- 
fect becoming  one  with  God  in  Him.  He  is  in  the  mean 
time  our  propitiation  in  the  relative  sense,  that  even 
in  our  incomplete  faith  and  unrealized  hope  in  Christ, 
God  reckons  not  against  us  all  that  is  lacking  in  us, 
but  imputes  to  us,  or  accounts  as  ours,  all  that  is  ful- 
filled in  Christ.  If  we  in  good  faith  repudiate  and 
disown  the  self  in  us  for  the  Christ  in  us,  God  sees  only 
the  Christ  and  not  the  self  that  is  still  in  us. 

In  this,  as  in  every  other  respect,  if  only  we  go  deep 
enough,  we  see  the  substantial  agreement  of  every 
single  New  Testament  interpreter  of  Jesus  Christ  and 
His  Gospel.  St.  John,  St.  Peter,  St.  Paul,  the  Writer 
to  the  Hebrews  are  at  one  in  seeing  in  Jesus,  not  merely 
in  a  general  way  the  presence  of  God  in  man,  and  the 
life  of  man  in  God;  but  no  less  that  divine-human  One- 
ness mediated  and  accomplished  in  the  only  possible 
way:  by  the  removal  of  the  one  cause  of  separation 
between  them:  and  that  removal  accomplished  in  the 
one  possible  way  of  bringing  every  man  to  the  issue 
and  to  the  power  of  death  to  sin  and  life  in  God. 

In  this  connection,  I  may  suggest  one  possible  inter- 


The  Blood  that  Cleanseth  179 

pretation  of  a  difficult  passage  in  the  Epistle  we  are 
considering.  "Who  is  he  that  overcometh  the  world, 
but  he  that  believeth  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God? 
This  is  he  that  came  by  water  and  blood,  even  Jesus 
Christ;  not  in  the  water  only,  but  in  the  water  and  in 
the  blood.  And  it  is  the  Spirit  that  beareth  witness, 
because  the  Spirit  is  the  truth."  The  "Son  of  God" 
here  expresses  not  the  Divine  Sonship  that  was  eternal 
with  God,  but  the  human  sonship  to  God  that  came 
with  our  Lord's  life  on  earth,  and  was  accomplished  or 
completed  only  in  His  resurrection.  "He  was  deter- 
mined Son  of  God  with  power,  according  to  the  spirit  of 
holiness,  by  the  resurrection  of  the  dead."  (Rom.  I.  4.) 
Faith  in  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God  and  faith  in  Him  as 
the  Christ  are  synonymous  expressions  in  the  Epistle 
before  us.  The  Chrism  wherewith  humanity  in  the  per- 
son of  our  Lord  is  anointed  is  the  spirit,  nature,  and  life 
of  God:  the  anointing  is  regeneration  or  birth  from 
above,  the  divine  impartation  of  sonship.  It  in  no 
wise  conflicts  with  the  eternal  essential  Sonship  of  our 
Incarnate  Lord,  to  say  that  as  man  He  was  subject  to 
the  universal  human  law  and  process  of  becoming  son 
of  God.  Sonship  with  us  is  a  free,  personal  self-con- 
forming to  the  spirit,  nature,  and  life  of  sons.  It  is  not 
the  natural  potentiality,  but  the  spiritual  actuality  or 
actualizing  of  all  that  is  involved  in  the  filial  relation. 
In  humanity  it  involves  the  exclusion  of  all  that  is 
unfilial,  or  contrary  to  the  divine  nature,  as  well  as  the 
inclusion  of  all  that  is  filial,  that  is,  full  participation 
in  all  the  divine  nature.  Participation  in  the  divine 


180  The  Reason  of  Life 

nature  is  holiness,  and  the  vital  principle  of  all  holiness 
is  perfect  love. 

Now  when  St.  John  speaks  of  our  Lord's  "coming  by 
water  and  blood,"  the  reference  is  to  the  manner  in 
which,  or  the  process  by  which,  divine  sonship  in  Him 
was  humanly  consummated.  It  comes,  first,  in  the 
water  of  baptism :  that  is,  it  comes  by  birth  from  above, 
by  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost  into  Him.  But  the  sym- 
bolical water  of  baptism  only  confers  the  principle  and 
power  of  Sonship,  or  of  the  divine  life.  It  but  equips 
for,  and  calls  to,  the  real  work  and  life  of  divine  sonship. 
It  signifies,  involves,  and  promises  the  death  to  sin 
and  life  to  God,  but  it  looks  forward  to  the  actualizing 
or  realizing  these  on  the  part  of  the  subject  himself. 
Therefore  divine  sonship  in  its  accomplished  complete- 
ness comes,  not  in  the  water  alone,  in  the  fact  of  the 
full  endowment  for  it  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  but  in  the 
water  and  in  the  blood,  in  the  endowment  for  it  followed 
and  finished  by  the  performance  or  accomplishment  of 
it.  The  water  of  Jordan  means,  and  finds  its  fulfilment 
only  in,  the  blood  of  Calvary,  the  actual  and  complete 
death  to  sin  and  life  to  God.  "And  it  is  the  spirit  that 
beareth  witness,  because  the  spirit  is  the  truth."  The 
mere  letter  of  all  this  amounts  to  nothing,  just  as  the 
flesh  by  itself  profiteth  nothing.  It  is  the  spirit  that 
quickens  and  imparts  life  and  reality.  The  reality  of 
the  water  and  of  the  blood,  of  regeneration,  of  the  death 
and  resurrection,  is  witnessed  and  proved  only  in  the 
spirit  and  power  of  the  new  life,  in  the  genuineness  and 
reality  of  the  sonship  attained. 


The  Blood  that  Cleanseth  181 

It  is  only  sonship  to  God,  so  realized  and  accom- 
plished, that  conquers  the  world.  It  was  so  with  our 
Lord  Himself:  "In  the  world,"  He  says,  "ye  have 
tribulation:  but  be  of  good  cheer;  I  have  overcome 
the  world."  It  was  not  as  God  that  He  overcame  the 
world,  but  as  man;  in  the  human  way  of  a  perfect  faith, 
love,  and  obedience;  by  full  proof  and  use  of  the  divine 
Fatherhood  and  His  own  human  sonship.  When  at 
His  baptism  our  Lord  heard  from  heaven  the  divine 
commendation,  "Thou  art  my  beloved  Son,  in  whom 
I  am  well  pleased,"  it  was  the  human  sonship  in  Him 
and  not  the  Divine  that  received  approval.  When  in 
the  wilderness  the  temptation  came  to  Him,  "  //  thou 
art  the  son  of  God"  —  it  was  His  human,  and  not  His 
eternal  Divine  Sonship  that  was  under  trial.  It  was  our 
Lord's  perfect  hold  upon  the  fatherhood  of  God,  His  per- 
fect maintenance  and  realization  of  His  own  sonship  to 
God,  that  gave  Him  His  perfect  victory  over  the  world, 
that  made  Him  the  conqueror  and  destroyer  of  sin,  and 
was  the  cause  that  He  could  not  be  holden  of  death. 

His  victory  was  our  victory:  He  wrought  it  in  our 
nature,  and  works  it  in  ourselves.  "This  is  the  victory 
that  overcometh  the  world,  even  our  faith."  And 
what  is  the  exact  and  specific  ground  and  substance  of 
our  faith?  "Who  is  he  that  overcometh  the  world, 
but  he  who  believeth  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God?" 
"He  that  confesseth  the  Son  hath  the  Father."  Jesus 
has  given  us  the  Father,  through  the  revelation  and 
impartation  to  us  of  His  own  sonship,  His  own  victory 
and  peace,  His  own  risen  and  ascended  life. 


182  The  Reason  of  Life 

Jesus  Christ  is  God's  perfect  witness  to  us,  both  of 
Himself  and  of  us,  and  of  the  relation  He  has  instituted 
and  established  between  us.  "He  that  believeth  on 
the  Son  of  God  hath  the  witness  in  him :  he  that  believ- 
eth not  God  hath  made  Him  a  liar;  because  he  hath  not 
believed  in  the  witness  that  God  hath  borne  concerning 
His  Son.  And  the  witness  is  this,  that  God  gave  unto 
us  eternal  life,  and  this  life  is  in  His  Son.  He  that 
hath  the  Son  hath  the  life;  he  that  hath  not  the  Son 
of  God  hath  not  the  life." 

I  use  interchangeably  "Spirit"  and  "spirit,"  "Son" 
and  "son."  The  "Eternal  Spirit,  or  spirit,"  through 
Whom,  or  through  which,  Jesus  Christ  "offered  Himself 
without  spot  to  God"  (Heb.  IX  14),  was  equally  the 
Personal  Spirit  of  God  and  the  human  spirit  actuating 
Jesus.  If  it  were  not  both,  in  a  perfect  unity,  it  could 
be  neither  in  that  consummate  divine-human  act  and 
character.  So,  if  the  accomplished  human  sonship  of 
Jesus  to  God  were  not  the  Incarnation  of  the  Eternal 
Son  of  God  in  our  humanity  and  in  us,  it  would  alike 
have  been  impossible  in  Him,  and  be  impossible  in  us. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  incarnation  of  Divine  Sonship 
would  be  impossible  and  meaningless,  otherwise  than 
in  our  own  human  sonship  by  ourselves  accomplished 
in  and  through  it. 


XV 

THE  COMFORT  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

IN  both  Gospel  and  Epistle  St.  John  applies,  first  to 
our  Lord  Himself,  and  secondarily  to  the  Holy  Ghost, 
the  title  Paraclete,  or  Advocate,  or  Helper,  or  Com- 
forter. The  word,  in  both  Greek  and  Latin,  means 
etymologically  "one  called  to,  to  the  side  of,  to  the  aid 
of  another."  One  who  is  unable  himself  "to  manage 
his  own  business,"  "conduct  his  own  case,"  or  "carry 
through  his  own  cause,"  needs  the  services  of  another 
who  can  do  it  with  and  for  him.  The  Latin  term  advo- 
cate has  been  limited  to  one  who  discharges  that 
function  in  law;  but  it  need  not  be  so  restricted  in  the 
part  assigned  to  the  office  in  the  Gospel.  There  is  no 
question  that  man  in  his  natural  state  is  in  a  case  in 
which  he  needs  intervention  from  without  and  from 
above  himself.  He  cannot,  of  himself,  live  his  life,  or 
be  himself:  insuperable  obstacles  and  complications 
lie  between  him  and  either  the  fulfilment  of  his  nature 
or  the  realization  of  himself.  The  increasing  recog- 
nition of  the  claim  that  religion  is  a  necessary  fact  and 
factor  in  human  life,  is  confession  of  the  truth  that 
humanity  is  dependent  upon  some  sort  of  divine 
cooperation  and  help.  I  wish  in  this  chapter  to  discuss 
the  nature  of  that  human  demand,  and  of  the  divine 
supply  to  it. 

183 


184  The  Reason  of  Life 

It  is  a  necessity  of  the  time,  as  well  for  the  correction 
as  for  the  defence  of  Christianity,  to  point  out  how 
consistently,  in  its  origin  in  the  New  Testament,  it  is 
its  function  to  be  a  help,  and  not  an  interference,  in 
and  with  human  life.  It  is  never  anything  to  be  done 
merely  for,  or  instead  of,  but  always  something  done 
with  and  in:  never  a  substitute  for,  but  always  the 
realization,  and  self-realization,  of  that  for  which  it  is. 
There  is  a  natural  disposition  to  complain  that  God 
does  not  Himself  do  things,  or  prevent  things,  in  the 
world.  I  am  prepared  to  admit  that  there  are  no  such 
interventions  or  interferences  on  His  part  in  the  natural 
course  of  the  world.  In  purely  natural  matters  His 
part  is  so  conformed  and  confined  to  His  own  method 
and  law  of  "  Nature,"  that  we  have  come  to  apply  to  it 
the  notion  and  principle  of  "  necessity."  It  is  not  in 
things  but  in  persons  —  not  in  the  domain  of  invariable 
law,  but  in  that  of  freedom  and  grace  —  that  we  are 
to  look  for  interventions  and  assistances.  The  natural 
world  is  here  for  us,  and  our  uses  in  it.  What  God 
does  beyond  that  in  it,  He  does  in  and  with,  and  through 
and  by  us.  What  more  in  it  ought  to  be  done,  or 
ought  to  be  remedied  or  prevented,  we  are  here  to  do 
or  to  remedy  or  prevent.  It  is  for  us  to  have  or  acquire 
the  knowledge,  the  skill,  the  disposition,  and  the  will 
to  make  the  world  all  that  it  ought  to  be.  It  ought  to 
be  only,  and  all,  that  which  we  can  make  it;  and  we 
can  make  it  all  that  it  ought  to  be.  Wherein  we  are 
insufficient,  of  ourselves,  for  the  task,  it  is  the  function 
of  religion  to  reenforce  and  enable  us;  but  that  is  all 


The  Comfort  of  Christianity  185 

that  religion  undertakes  to  do  —  or,  for  our  sakes, 
ought  to  do.  To  be  spared  any  part  of  the  responsi- 
bility, or  the  labor,  or  the  pain  of  what  we  are  here  for, 
or  of  what  the  world  is  here  to  furnish  the  necessary 
conditions  for,  would  be  outside  interference,  not  in 
the  interest  of,  but  against  all  the  means  and  ends  of 
our  being.  If  there  are  things  that  ought  to  be,  and 
are  not,  or  if  there  are  things  that  ought  not  to  be  in 
the  world,  and  are  —  it  is  infinitely  better  for  us  that 
they  should  wait  indefinitely  upon  us  to  supply  or 
remove,  than  that  God  should  be  expected  to  do  it 
for  us. 

I  am  quite  at  the  other  extreme  from  denying  that 
God  is  as  much  alive  and  present  and  operative  in  His 
world  at  this  moment  as  at  any  other  in  its  past;  but 
the  ever-new  creative  energy  that  is  always  in  process 
operates,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  this  world  of  ours,  in 
and  with  and  through  human  freedom  and  initiative; 
and  the  changes  to  be  made  in  the  world  all  wait,  and 
will  always  wait,  to  be  made  by  ourselves,  and  not  by 
Another  without  or  instead  of  us.  If  accidents  happen, 
or  plagues  spread,  or  evils  exist,  or  vice  reigns  among 
us,  we  need  indeed  to  call  upon  God  to  remedy  or  pre- 
vent them  —  but  only  as  we  "know  His  ways,"  and 
understand  that  He  will  not  do  anything  for  us  that 
we  will  not  do  for  ourselves.  We  need  Him  every 
hour,  but  we  need  Him  in  ourselves,  in  what  we  are 
and  do,  rather  than  in  anything  done  or  to  be  done 
for  or  instead  of  us. 

This  "way  of  God"  appears  first  and  most  mani- 


186  The  Reason  of  Life 

festly  in  the  method  and  manner  of  the  Incarnation 
itself.  The  Life  that  was  manifested  —  however  un- 
qualifiedly it  was  the  Life  that  was  with  God,  and  that 
was  God — was,  nevertheless,  manifested  wholly  as  our 
life:  the  Godhead  was  wholly  within  the  humanity. 
There  was  nothing  of  knowledge,  of  power,  or  of 
divinity,  visible  or  present  in  our  Lord's  humanity,  as 
such,  that  was  not  humanly  communicated  to  it,  that 
was  not  ascribed  to  the  action  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in 
Him  as  it  is  the  function  of  the  Holy  Ghost  to  act  in 
humanity.  If  the  Spirit  of  God  operated  more  pow- 
erfully, even  perfectly,  in  Him,  it  was  precisely  in  the 
ratio  in  which,  humanly,  He  cooperated  most  perfectly 
with  the  Holy  Ghost.  This  is  not  only  plain  matter  of 
record,  but  is  vital  to  the  sense  in  which  the  Divine 
Life,  in  Him,  became  our  life.  There  is  a  sense  in  which, 
and  a  process  by  which  humanity,  potentially  divine  in 
itself,  can  become  actually  divine  by  itself.  The  process 
is  by  faith,  through  which  reciprocally  Deity  unites 
itself  with  humanity,  and  humanity  unites  itself  with 
Deity.  Jesus  Christ  is  the  revelation,  the  realization, 
on  both  sides,  of  that  divine-human  process. 

Jesus  Christ,  then,  is  "God  for  us,"  distinctly  in  the 
sense  of  "  God  with  us  and  in  us."  The  attitude  of 
God  toward  us,  in  Him,  is  that  of  sympathy  and  co- 
operation with  us  in  our  condition:  grace  to  enable  us 
to  overcome  and  surmount  our  condition;  never  of 
deliverance  from  the  condition  otherwise  than  through 
our  own  victory  over  it.  The  condition  is  part  of  the 
process,  to  annul  which  would  be  to  annul  our  own 


The  Comfort  of  Christianity  187 

part  in  it.  This  may  seem  as  though  God  created  evil 
for  us  to  overcome.  But  there  is  no  evil  in  all  our 
condition  apart  from  our  personal  will  and  disposition 
and  action  toward  it,  or  apart  from  human  responsi- 
bility in  relation  to  it.  It  is  idle,  however,  to  specu- 
late about  the  responsibility  for  existing  conditions. 
They  are  here,  and  the  question  is  what  is  to  be  done 
about  them?  To  what  extent  are  they  to  be  changed 
or  helped  by  prayer  and  miracle?  No  little  indeed  by 
prayer,  and  no  less  by  miracle  —  if  we  mean  the  true 
miracles  wrought,  and  that  ought  infinitely  more  to 
be  wrought,  by  prayer.  But  all  miracle  wrought  in 
this  human  world  of  ours  otherwise  than  through  and 
by  ourselves  is  at  the  cost  and  expense  of  ourselves. 
The  habit  of  expecting  God  to  do  things  or  to  prevent 
things  is  nothing  else  or  less  than  the  shifting  from 
ourselves  the  responsibility,  and  the  deadening  in 
ourselves  and  in  human  society  the  sense  of  responsi- 
bility, for  doing  and  preventing  or  curing  things.  We 
are  not  set  in  the  garden  of  this  world  to  sit  down  and 
see  God  till  and  tend  it  for  us;  nor,  if  we  prefer  the 
figure,  in  the  wilderness  or  desert  of  the  world,  to  wait 
upon  prayer  and  miracle  to  make  it  blossom  as  the 
rose  —  either  materially,  morally,  or  spiritually. 

But  what  miracles  will  not  be  wrought  by  prayer, 
what  wonders  will  not  God  perform  by  His  grace 
through  our  faith,  if  our  will  to  be  divine  shall  ever 
meet  and  equal  His  desire  to  be  human  in  us!  We 
cannot  too  often  recall  and  ponder  upon  His  lament: 
"How  would  I!  —  and  ye  will  not." 


188  The  Reason  of  Life 

Let  us  illustrate  a  little  from  the  teaching  or  example 
of  the  New  Testament  the  principle  I  have  been  insist- 
ing upon.  There  has  been  some  question  whether  our 
English  equivalent  "  Comforter  "  truly  expresses  the 
function  belonging  to  the  Paraclete,  Advocate,  or 
Helper.  It  does  so,  I  think,  if  we  understand  the 
term  in  all  the  fulness  of  its  etymological  meaning,  but 
not  otherwise.  "  Comfort  —  (con-fortis)  To  impart 
strength  and  hope  to;  "  —  says  the  dictionary.  There 
are  two  ways  of  helping  or  saving  from  any  evil  —  ex- 
ternally to  remove  the  evil,  or  internally  to  fortify  and 
strengthen  against  the  evil.  A  patient  calls  in  to  his 
bedside,  or  to  his  aid,  the  physician,  who  is  thus  a  true 
advocatus  or  paraclete.  The  physician  may  use  an 
antidote  or  specific  which  neutralizes  or  removes  the 
cause  of  trouble.  Or,  letting  that  alone,  he  may  so 
treat  the  condition  or  system  of  the  patient  as  to  enable 
him  of  himself  to  throw  off  or  overcome  the  trouble. 
Germs  of  disease  are  dangerous  only  to  impaired  or 
diseased  tissues  and  systems.  Impart  vitality  and 
vigor  to  these,  and  they  may  be  rendered  immune 
against  the  seeds  of  sickness. 

The  sense  in  which  our  Lord  applies  to  Himself  first 
the  title  Paraclete  may  be  developed  somewhat  as 
follows:  Jesus  Christ  may  be  defined  as  the  divine 
response  to  the  cry  of  humanity  for  help  from  above. 
There  is  a  case  or  cause,  not  only  between  us  and  God, 
but  no  less  between  us  and  ourselves,  us  and  our 
higher  ends  and  destinies,  which  we  are  essentially 
insufficient  to  manage  or  conduct  for  ourselves.  As 


The  Comfort  of  Christianity  189 

before  an  earthly  tribunal  the  chosen  advocate  stands 
for  and  represents  his  client,  pleads  his  cause,  conducts 
his  case,  mediates  between  him  and  the  law  or  the 
judge,  so  in  our  larger  cause  Jesus  Christ  stands  with 
us,  by  us,  and  mediates  for  us,  not  only,  as  I  have  said, 
between  us  and  God,  but,  in  that,  between  us  and 
eternal  right  or  righteousness,  between  us  and  our 
proper  ends  and  selves.  The  claim  or  demand  of  God 
or  of  righteousness  upon  us  is  not  to  be  distinguished 
from  that  of  ourselves  upon  us:  we  cannot  think  of 
God  otherwise  than  as  the  infinite  or  perfect  of  our- 
selves, or  truly  of  ourselves  otherwise  than  as  the 
incomplete  and  imperfect  of  what  God  is.  The 
tribunal  before  which  Christ  stands  for  us  is  within 
us:  He  stands  for  the  eternal  and  infinite  "  ought  "  of 
ourselves,  the  mediator  not  only  of  its  revelation  but 
of  its  realization. 

But  the  point  to  observe  is  how  consistently  God 
in  Christ  appears  as  the  helper  of,  and  not  the  substi- 
tute for,  ourselves.  The  Paraclete  combines  the  func- 
tions of  His  office,  interpreted  actively  as  well  as 
passively :  He  is  not  alone  the  "  Called  upon  "  but  the 
"  Caller  upon."  He  is  the  sympathizer,  the  encour- 
ager,  the  strengthener,  the  enabler,  and  in  all  those 
senses  the  Comforter.  He  has  begotten  us  unto  a 
living  hope  by  His  own  resurrection  from  the  dead. 
He  says  to  us,  "  Be  of  good  cheer,  I  have  overcome 
the  world."  He  calls  upon  us  to  be  and  do  what 
He  Himself  has  done  and  is.  He  is  the  Author  of 
our  salvation  and  life,  as  having  been  the  leader, 


190  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  fore-runner,  the  first-begotten  in  it.  He  has  done 
and  is  nothing  for  us  that  He  does  not  call  on  us  to 
do  and  be  in  Him.  God  in  Him  has  abolished 
nothing  either  of  the  conditions  under  which,  or  of 
the  process  by  which,  it  is  appointed  for,  and  is  the 
higher  nature  of,  all  men  to  become  divine.  The 
Deity  of  our  Lord,  in  contradistinction  from  the 
divinity  which  He  shares  with  and  imparts  to  us  all, 
is  to  be  found,  not  in  any  distinction  in  kind  in  His 
humanity  or  in  His  human  life  from  ours,  but  in  the 
fact  that  He  is  the  Incarnation  from  God  as  well 
as  the  impartation  in  us  of  all  that  He  is  in  our 
nature.  He  gives  Himself  to  us,  not  only  as  sample 
or  example,  as  evidence  and  proof  of  what  God 
would  do  with  us  and  in  us  —  if  we  will  —  but  as  the 
effectual  power  and  substance  of  it.  Through  our 
faith,  hope,  and  love  He  enters  into  us  as  the  very 
matter  of  our  salvation  and  substance  of  ourselves  — 
God  our  holiness,  our  righteousness,  our  life. 

So,  to  turn  again  for  a  moment  from  Jesus  as  advo- 
cate of  our  cause,  to  Jesus  as  physician  of  our  souls, 
His  miracles  of  healing  are  ordinarily  to  be  looked  for 
in  us  and  through  us,  and  only  mediately  and  second- 
arily upon  us.  Even  where  they  were,  or  are,  mani- 
fested physically  or  phenomenally,  the  real  miracle, 
the  new  matter,  force  or  power,  was  in  the  subjective 
condition  or  cause  rather  than  in  the  objective 
effect. 

We  have  still  to  illustrate  from  the  New  Testament 
the  principle  that  the  true  Christian  aphesis  is  not 


The  Comfort  of  Christianity          191 

the  putting  away  of  the  evil  from  the  person,  but  the 
release  of  the  person  from,  enabling  him  against,  the 
evil.  It  is  always  not  only  being  saved  but  a  saving 
himself  from  the  power  of  the  thing.  One's  self  can 
be  saved  only  by  being  directed  and  enabled  in  the 
saving  oneself.  In  the  case  of  our  Lord  Himself, 
nothing  so  brings  His  humanity  home  to  our  hearts  as 
what  may  be  called  the  natural  weakness  in  Him,  the 
elemental  instinctive  wish,  on  the  first  impulse,  to  have 
the  extreme  evil,  the  overwhelming  temptation  taken 
away  from  Him,  to  be  spared  what  seems  impossible  to 
be  endured.  When  "  the  hour  "  so  long  foreseen,  even 
in  anticipation  accepted,  is  actually  upon  Him,  what 
is  the  first  instinctive  impulse  and  utterance?  "What 
shall  I  say!  —  Father  save  me  from  this  hour."  And 
immediately  recollection  and  reflection  correct  the 
momentary  instinct:  "But  for  this  cause  came  I  to  this 
hour."  If  we  could  all  recollect  and  reflect,  when 
temptation  in  its  thousand  forms  assails  us  and  seems 
more  than  we  can  bear,  that  "  for  this  cause  are  we 
here!"  Without  going  further  back  into  reasons  and 
causes  that  precede  facts,  our  conditions  in  this  world, 
as  Bishop  Butler  says,  "are  what  they  are."  And  we 
are  here  to  meet  them  as  they  are.  It  is  no  part  of  the 
manifest  divine  intention,  in  the  whole  or  in  any  of 
the  particulars,  to  alter  the  conditions  for  us,  but  only 
to  do  so  through  and  with  and  by  us  —  so  fast  and 
so  far  as  we  will  act  in  and  with  Him.  God  did  not 
spare  His  only-begotten  Son  the  suffering  of  that 
dreadful  hour;  but  He  did  what  was  infinitely  wiser 


192  The  Reason  of  Life 

and  kinder:  He  saved  Him,  not  from  it,  but  in  it, 
and  through  it,  and  by  it.  Again,  as  the  hour  draws 
yet  nearer,  nature  will  make  itself  heard:  "Father,  if 
it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass  from  me!"  And 
again  the  true  and  the  right  that  are  above  nature 
assert  themselves:  "Nevertheless,  not  my  will,  but 
Thine,  be  done!"  Again,  if  we  could  but  learn  the 
lesson,  that  —  not  alone  if  we  love  God,  but  if  we 
truly  love  ourselves  —  not  our  wishes,  who  know  not, 
but  His  Will,  who  knows,  and  Who  loves  us  better 
than  we  love  ourselves,  is  that  which  is  to  be  done! 
In  all  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus,  which  is  the  revelation 
of  human  life  as  God  would  be  in  it,  and  as  it  should 
be  in  God,  I  see  no  exception  to  the  principle  that 
our  life  is  here  to  meet  earthly  and  human  conditions 
and  to  overcome  and  survive  them  —  not  that  the 
inevitable  is  ever  to  be  removed  from  before  us,  or 
that  we  are  to  be  spared  the  pain  of  its  endurance 
and  the  necessity  of  its  conquest. 

We  learn  the  same  lesson  from  the  experience  of 
those  who  follow  most  immediately  and  completely 
in  our  Lord's  footsteps.  St.  Paul  was  crippled  by 
"a  thorn  in  the  flesh"  which  impeded  and  threatened 
to  defeat  his  ministry.  Thrice  he  besought  the  Lord 
that  it  might  depart  from  him;  and  the  answer  came, 
"My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee:  My  power  is  made 
perfect  through  weakness."  Thenceforth  St.  Paul's 
support  in  the  face  of  all  difficulties  or  obstacles  is, 
"I  can  endure  all  things,  and  do  all  things,  through 
Him  that  strengthened  me."  No  more  in  the  case 


The  Comfort  of  Christianity  193 

of  the  Apostles  than  in  that  of  their  Lord  do  I  see  that 
miracles  were  wrought  for  them  in  answer  to  prayer; 
we  see  marvellous  miracles  wrought  in  and  through 
them  by  grace  working  through  faith  and  prayer. 

The  above  discussion  has  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  the  question  of  the  possibility,  or  the  probability, 
or  the  actual  occurrence  of  any  kind  of  miracle  or 
miracles.  No  one  who  seriously  and  understandingly 
holds  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  and  the  truth 
of  our  Lord's  Person  and  Work  will  hesitate  about 
any  inferior  fact  essential  to  that  supreme  one.  But 
I  am  not  talking  now  of  what  might,  could,  or  would 
happen  under  any  circumstances,  but  only  of  what  is 
God's  actual  principle  and  mode  of  dealing,  through 
Christianity,  with  human  life  and  destiny.  When  we 
say  or  feel,  as  so  often  we  do,  that  certain  things  that 
come  by  natural  consequences,  because  of  their  sad 
or  appalling  effects  upon  human  life  or  happiness, 
"  ought  not  to  be  permitted,"  or  "  are  mysterious 
and  inexplicable"  (though  as  natural  occurrences 
they  may  be  not  only  explicable  but  necessary),  or 
"  shake  our  faith  in  a  divine  providence,"  and  even 
"  in  God,"  —  what  is  meant  by  such  thoughts  and 
utterances  is  nothing  less  than  this:  either  that  nature 
itself  is  all  wrong,  or  that  God  ought  to  be  constantly 
interfering  with  it  and  shaping  it  in  the  supposed 
interest  of  every  being  whom  it  concerns.  In  reply 
to  which  I  would  say,  That  if  nature  were  not  just  as 
constant,  as  invariable,  even  as  necessary  and  as 
seemingly  indifferent  and  inexorable  as  it  is,  human 
14 


194  The  Reason  of  Life 

life  in  all  its  highest  characteristics  and  ends  would  be 
impossible  in  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  am  a  literal  and  firm  believer 
in  the  divine  assurance  that  to  those  who  love  God, 
and  who  enter  into  and  understand  His  divine  pur- 
poses, all  things  —  absolutely  all  things,  in  nature  as 
well  as  in  grace  —  work  together  unto  then*  eternal 
good.  By  "loving  God"  I  mean  no  more  nor  less  than 
loving  eternal  truth,  and  order,  and  goodness;  not  one 
of  which  is  a  mere  abstract  idea  or  sentiment,  and  all 
of  which  can  meet  and  be  real  only  in  an  eternal  Person. 
Life  is  possible  only  in  reaction  or  interaction  with 
environment,  but  it  is  by  no  means  lived  only  in  or  by 
concurrence  and  correspondence  with  environment. 
Life  has  in  large  measure  to  shape,  mould,  and  even 
remake  its  environment.  We  are  here,  not  to  conform 
or  correspond  with  the  world  as  it  is,  but  to  be  perpet- 
ually reforming  and  making  a  new  world  out  of  it. 
So  far  from  our  life  being  a  correspondence  with  our 
world,  it  is  equally  true  that  it  is  here  to  be  made 
through  enmity  with  and  conquest  over  the  world. 
The  enmity  of  the  world  is  at  least  as  necessary  to  the 
making  and  shaping  of  human  life  as  its  friend- 
ship. 

For  what  do  we  mean  by  the  friendship  or  the  enmity, 
the  concurrence  or  the  contradiction,  between  us  and 
our  environment.  The  distinction  between  right  and 
wrong,  and  the  liability  of  things  to  the  alternative 
possibility  of  right  or  wrong,  is  the  root  and  ground,  the 
condition,  in  nature  of  the  existence  of  such  a  thing  as 


The  Comfort  of  Christianity          195 

human  freedom,  of  moral  reason,  choice,  and  will,  of 
finite  character  and  personality.  We  have  said,  with 
Kant,  that  there  is  nothing  right  or  good  but  the  right 
or  good  will:  moral  distinctions  exist  only  for  and  in 
the  free  will.  But  in  a  lower  sense  of  "right"  it  is  evi- 
dent that,  from  the  beginning  of  the  evolution  of  life 
as  we  know  it,  it  has  been  liable  to  the  possibility  of 
going  right  or  wrong.  In  the  most  mechanical  of 
natural  products,  the  most  material  multiplications 
of  offspring,  the  fact  of  "variations,"  the  recognition 
of  degrees  of  fitness  and  unfitness,  in  consequence  of 
which  some  survive  and  some  perish,  some  are  benef- 
icent and  some  injurious,  some  beautiful  and  right, 
others  ugly  and  wrong  —  these  facts  or  phenomena  of 
bare  nature,  prior  to  the  appearance  in  it  of  spirit  or 
personality,  are  premonitions  and  preparations  that 
look  forward  to  and  are  explained  by  the  real  right  and 
wrong,  good  and  bad,  of  the  formal  freedom  with  and 
in  which  personality  and  humanity  are  born.  By 
formal  freedom  is  meant  reason  to  understand  and 
freedom  to  make  right  or  wrong  choice  and  to  perform 
good  or  bad  actions.  The  evolution  or  transition 
from  necessary  to  free,  from  physical  to  spiritual,  from 
product  of  nature  to  child  of  God,  will  never  be  scien- 
tifically traceable  or  explicable.  Life  has  depths  of 
mystery  in  it  far  beneath  the  plummet  of  any  earthly 
student  of  mere  phenomena.  All  that  we  know  is 
that,  out  of  a  seemingly  eternal  process  of  gradual 
becoming,  there  has  come  and  does  exist  a  world  of 
finite  spirit,  of  reason  to  understand  and  freedom  to 


196  The  Reason  of  Life 

choose  moral  opposites,  to  pursue  and  to  reach  alter- 
native ends  and  destinies.  This  is  the  only  complete 
meaning  or  possible  reality  of  right  and  wrong,  good 
and  bad;  and  for  this  possibility,  and  the  spiritual 
and  moral  personality  conditioned  by  it,  all  things  else 
have  existed  and  do  exist.  It  is  perfectly  true  that 
Personality  is  the  only  true  final  cause  or  real  end-in- 
itself .  There  is  nothing  else  for  which  in  any  true 
sense  things  can  be. 

The  world  for  us  then  cannot  be  otherwise  than  a 
world  of  possible  good  and  evil,  right  and  wrong:  and 
if  possible,  then  actual.  There  is  no  choice  of  good 
that  is  not  an  actual  rejection  of  evil,  nor  choice  of 
wrong  that  is  not  a  real  refusal  of  right.  I  admit 
that  the  practical  distinguishing  of  the  gradations 
between  mere  mechanical  action  on  the  one  hand  and 
free,  spiritual  and  moral,  action  on  the  other,  is  impos- 
sible for  us  —  and  therefore  the  denial  to  us  of  final 
judgment  or  retributive  justice  —  but  the  distinction 
exists,  and  the  whole  higher  evolution  of  humanity 
is  into  the  truer  recognition  and  sense  of  it. 

I  repeat,  therefore,  that  life  for  us  is  correspondence 
and  cooperation  with  a  world  of  right,  or  with  the  right 
of  the  world;  and  enmity  with  a  world  of  wrong,  or  with 
all  the  wrong  of  the  world.  In  which  the  true  part  and 
good  for  us  is,  not  in  the  having  things  changed  for 
us,  but  the  changing  them  ourselves;  not  in  looking 
to  God  to  abolish  the  evil,  but  for  grace  and  power,  in 
our  Lord,  which  means  in  ourselves,  to  endure,  over- 
come, and  so  abolish  it.  What  is  true  of  the  individual 


The  Comfort  of  Christianity          197 

man  is  true  of  the  world  of  humanity;  and  the  individ- 
ual has  always  to  wait  and  suffer  for  the  slow  move- 
ments of  humanity.  Society  is  cruel  to  men  and 
women  in  its  resistance  and  reluctance  to  right  its 
wrongs  and  to  recognize  and  advance  their  rights. 
But  it  is  better  for  society  to  have  to  bear  and  dis- 
charge its  own  responsibility,  no  matter  at  what  cost, 
or  in  what  time,  than  that  there  be  outside  divine 
intervention  to  hasten  it.  It  is  better  that  the  physi- 
cal health  of  the  earth  should,  after  so  long,  be  bet- 
tered by  sanitary  and  salutary  humanity,  intelligence, 
energy,  and  actual  cleansing,  than  that  long  ago  God 
should  have  worked  miracles  in  opposition  to  plagues 
in  response  to  faith  and  prayer.  The  better  place  for 
His  miracles  is  in  the  awakened,  enlightened,  and  ener- 
gized intelligence,  affections,  and  wills  of  men,  society, 
humanity,  to  do  these  things  for  themselves  and  for 
others.  It  is  absurd  to  desire  or  to  expect  that  God 
should  have  made  us  men,  in  His  image,  by  giving  us 
to  have  life  in  ourselves,  by  putting  it  upon  us  to  make 
our  own  lives;  should  have  placed  us  in  an  environ- 
ment with  all  the  materials  and  conditions  for  making 
our  own  world,  after  a  pattern  and  fashion  which  He 
should  show  us  in  the  Mount;  and  that  then  He  shall 
intervene  and  interfere  to  make  our  lives  and  our  world 
not  our  own,  the  expression,  not  of  our  growing  and 
developing  reasons,  affections,  wills,  and  powers,  but 
of  His  own  omnipotent  power. 


XVI 
THE  WAY  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD 

WE  are  several  times  in  the  New  Testament  reminded 
that  "No  one  hath  seen  God  at  any  time."  That 
means  that  if  in  any  sense  we  are  to  know  God,  it  must 
be  through  some  mean  or  medium  between  Him  and 
us.  The  vital  question  for  us  is  as  to  what  that  mean 
is.  Again,  the  reminder  that  God  cannot  be  seen  or 
known  immediately  or  "in  Himself,"  but  only  medi- 
ately or  through  something  else,  conveys  to  us  this 
idea :  That  He  is  unknowable  in  His  person,  and  know- 
able  only  in  His  acts  or  works.  "  He"  or  "  Himself"  is  a 
personal  pronoun,  and  assumes  the  personality  of  God. 
But  are  we  to  stop  at  the  fact  of  God's  being  a  Person 
in  Himself,  and  remain  satisfied  with  the  conclusion 
that  He  is  forever  to  be  knowable  or  known  only  indi- 
rectly through  acts  and  never  directly  or  in  Himself? 

Let  us  approach  somewhat  systematically  the  answer 
to  this  question.  There  are  three  stages  of  thought 
on  the  matter.  The  first  is  that  which,  either  avowedly 
or  practically,  denies  personality  in  God  Himself; 
which,  as  in  pantheism  or  monism,  sees  in  what  is 
called  God  simply  a  personification  of  the  Principle, 
One  and  Universal,  of  all  things.  God  is  there  Sub- 
stance or  Cause,  thinkable  or  knowable  only  in  the 

198 


Way  of  the  Knowledge  of  God        199 

All  of  which  it  is  the  subject  or  substance  and  cause. 
Where  there  is  the  denial  of  universal  or  divine  person- 
ality, there  follows  logically  and  practically  the  denial 
of  all,  and  so  of  human,  personality.  Such  a  monistic 
or  pantheistic  position  is  outside  altogether  of  our 
present  enquiry. 

There  is,  secondly,  the  position  of  the  many  who,  if 
they  do  not  concede  the  personality  of  God  in  literal 
terms,  at  any  rate  question  it  in  the  interest,  not  of 
anything  less  or  lower,  but  on  the  ground  that  the  higher 
being  and  nature  of  God  cannot  be  thought  or  expressed 
in  the  lower  terms  of  ourselves.  These,  if  they  are 
consistent  and  sincere,  are  practically  theists  for  our 
purpose;  if  they  are  really  anything  more  than  theists, 
so  much  the  better.  My  present  business  is  only  with 
those  who,  holding  the  personality,  or  something  higher, 
of  God,  assume  that  such  a  God  must  or  does,  forever, 
let  Himself  be  knowable  or  known  only  indirectly 
through  impersonal  acts  and  never  personally  or  in 
that  which  is  His  true  Self.  Shall  God  have  given  us 
selves,  even  so  capable  as  they  are  of  knowing  Himself: 
so  full  of  aspiration  and  impulse  to  know  Him;  and 
shall  He  forever  remain  Himself  unknown?  The  wide 
distinction  I  am  insisting  upon  is  that  between  a  mere 
inferential  or  speculative  knowing  about  God  and  the 
direct  or  personal  knowing  Himself.  I  have  in  mind 
now  those  who,  admitting  the  former,  practically  ex- 
clude even  the  possibility  of  the  latter.  If  they  admit 
any  human  personal  relation  to  God  at  all,  it  is  in  fact 
personal  only  on  our  side,  not  on  God's.  That  God, 


200  The  Reason  of  Life 

in  any  sense  on  His  part,  or  otherwise  than  through 
exalted  thought  or  emotion  on  theirs,  spoke  with 
Abraham  or  through  the  Prophets,  or  manifested 
Himself  in  Jesus  Christ,  does  not  enter  into  their 
calculation.  Faith  may  have  validity  as  a  heightened 
sense  of  the  reality  of  things  imagined  or  inferred  by 
ourselves;  but  as  an  actual  experience  of  a  real  personal 
meeting  with  us  of  God,  or  communication  to  us  from 
God,  it  is  out  of  the  question.  The  heavens  are  sealed, 
so  far  as  any  response  from  them  is  concerned;  we  are 
shut  up  to  what  we  may  infer  or  conjecture  or  guess 
from  what  we  know  of  the  world  and  ourselves:  any 
transcending  of  that  is  only  within  the  limit  of  our 
own  personal  aspiration. 

Is  there  any  real  personal  knowing  of  God  —  any 
true  meeting,  not  only  of  us  with  God  in  faith,  but  of 
God  with  us  in  grace?  Supposing  that  there  is,  we 
shall  have  to  distinguish  between  the  ordinary  instances 
of  it  assumed  in  all  acts  of  faith  or  prayer,  or  in  divinely 
instituted  answers  of  grace,  as  sacraments  —  between 
these  and  those  extraordinary  and  exceptional  instances 
which  have  prevailed  and  remained  as  revelations  to 
and  inspirations  for  the  whole  world.  Such  are  those 
to  which  I  have  alluded:  the  permanent  establishment 
of  faith  and  promise  of  grace  through  Abraham;  the 
voice  of  God  uttered  through  Moses  and  the  Prophets; 
the  Word  of  God  spoken  and  the  Life  of  God  manifested 
in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ;  the  degree  or  amount  of 
permanent  inspiration  for  the  world  to  be  found  in  the 
New  Testament  as  the  record  of  Christianity. 


Way  of  tJte  Knowledge  of  God        201 

Before  entering  upon  these  questions  of  degree,  let 
us  first  consider  the  whole  matter  of  kind.  If  there  is 
personal  relation  at  all  between  God  and  us,  the  modes 
and  varieties  of  it  are  only  matters  of  detail.  Any  at 
all  involves  and  establishes  the  possibility,  and  even 
probability,  of  all.  Personal  relation  carries  with  it 
the  larger  truth  of  transcendent  relation  between  us 
and  God.  It  means  that  what  we  call  "spirit"  within 
us  is  not  limited  to  what  is  immanent  in  ourselves  or 
hi  the  natural  process  of  which  we  are  product  and  part, 
but  is  organ  and  mean  of  intercourse  and  relation  with 
the  Spirit  that  is  without,  as  well  as  within,  the  world 
and  ourselves. 

Supposing  that  God  is  Spirit  and  is  Personal,  and  that 
we  are  finite  spirits  and  persons,  made  for  personal 
relation  and  intercourse  with  Himself  —  but  only  as 
by  evolution,  and  by  growth  through  use,  we  acquire  or 
make  the  spiritual  faculties  and  capacities  involved  in 
that  interrelation:  how  then  may  God  be  expected  to 
enter  spiritually  or  personally  into  the  world  thus 
making  for  personal  knowledge  of  and  union  with  Him? 
We  may  be  sure  that  He  will  never  begin  to  be  person- 
ally known  through  any  mere  processes  or  phenomena 
of  what  we  call  nature,  nor  of  ourselves  as  products 
and  parts  of  nature.  The  kind  of  knowledge  we  are 
speaking  of,  that  not  of  inference  or  conjecture  but  of 
personal  acquaintance,  cannot  come  through  things 
but  only  through  persons.  The  order  and  processes 
of  nature,  the  most  stupendous  or  marvellous  of  physi- 
cal phenomena,  may  reveal  something  about  God; 


202  The  Reason  of  Life 

they  cannot  reveal  Him.  Even  though  the  fact  of 
personality  might  be  revealed  through  a  physical  act, 
the  face  of  it,  the  Person  Himself,  is  not  visible  in  any 
mere  act  as  such.  Nothing  whatever  that  even  God 
can  make  or  do,  so  long  as  it  is  to  us  a  mere  thing,  so 
long  as  we  speak  of  it  as  "it,"  as  we  speak  of  nature,  or 
order,  or  beauty,  or  goodness  as  "  it,"  can  reveal  God 
Himself,  but  only  something  about  Him  —  as  that, 
for  example,  "  He  makes  for  righteousness."  Not  even 
the  certain  fact  that  we  ourselves  are  persons  can  do 
more  than  prove,  as  I  believe  it  does,  that  God  is 
personal;  the  certain  knowledge  that  God  is  a  Person 
would  still  be  infinitely  far  off  from  personally  knowing 
God. 

How  then  shall  God  make  Himself  known  to  us  — 
Himself,  as  distinguished  from  any  mere  effect  or  even 
quality  or  character  of  Himself?  With  certain  assump- 
tions we  may  safely  begin.  If  God  as  personal  and 
ourselves  as  persons  are  made  for  mutual  knowledge 
and  association  —  for  essentially  personal  relation,  as 
every  spiritual  instinct  and  aspiration  of  our  nature 
seems  to  indicate  and  demand  —  then  that  personal 
relation  is  both  possible  and  actual,  subject  though  it 
must  be  to  the  so  slowly  eliminated  limitations  of  our- 
selves. For  God  must  not  go  beyond  us,  if  we  are  to 
remain  ourselves.  If  "  variations  "  occur  even  hi  the 
processes  and  among  the  products  of  mere  nature,  we 
are  prepared  to  meet  them  in  those  of  freedom  and 
grace  to  a  far  larger  extent.  The  potentiality  of  spirit- 
ual relation  to  God  common  to  all  will  be  expected  to 


Way  of  the  Knowledge  of  God        203 

manifest  itself  actually  with  infinite  variability  among 
individuals.  Life  is  the  great  mystery  of  the  universe: 
we  know  nothing  of  it  but  the  fact.  At  no  stage  of  it 
can  we  say  more  of  it  than  that  it  is,  and  least  of  all  at 
its  highest  stage,  when  the  finite  enters  into  and  becomes 
one  with  the  infinite,  losing  itself  only  to  find  itself. 
We  can  only  observe  and  study  it  in  its  highest  expres- 
sions. With  whatever  of  human  limitation,  error,  and 
sin,  humanity  manifests  itself  in  Abraham  as  the  per- 
sonal friend  of  God.  The  exact,  scientific,  historical 
amount  of  truth  in  that  one  outstanding  instance,  we 
need  not  now  concern  ourselves  with.  The  type  has 
passed  into  the  experience  of  the  world,  and  has  become 
universal  and  permanent.  Whatever  may  be  said  of 
Abraham,  the  faith  of  Abraham  is  here  and  is  ours. 
Leaving  aside  for  the  present  the  extraordinary  degree 
of  revelation,  of  divine  promise  and  prophecy,  that 
came  to  the  world  through  Abraham,  we  find  in  the 
ordinary,  non-miraculous,  exercise  of  his  faith,  in  that 
which  we  may  and  do  share  with  him,  the  fact  we  are 
in  search  of.  I  mean  the  fact  of  a  personal  knowledge 
of  and  understanding  with  God.  In  Abraham  the 
friend  of  God  we  have  the  type  and  example  of  personal 
relation,  communion,  and  spiritual  participation  with 
God,  which  has  reproduced  itself  in  and  justified  itself 
to  all  religious  experience  since.  To  him  we  owe 
historically  the  first  expression  of  the  fundamental 
truth  of  Christianity,  the  essentially  human  truth  that 
there  is  no  true  holiness,  righteousness,  or  eternal  life 
available  or  possible  for  us  save  through  faith  in  God, 


204  The  Reason  of  Life 

and  from  that  personal  union  with  God  which  is  His 
gracious  presence  with  and  in  us  through  faith.  The 
reality  of  such  a  personal  union  with  God  is  not  a  matter 
either  of  explanation  or  of  scientific  proof;  it  is  a  matter 
simply  of  fact  and  of  spiritual  experience.  Its  verifica- 
tion is  only  with  those  who  have  it  and  know  it,  who 
can  say  with  our  Lord,  "I  speak  that  I  do  know,  and 
testify  that  I  have  seen."  Moreover,  the  knowledge  of 
God  which,  our  Lord  says,  is  our  eternal  life  is  not  even 
to  those  who  have  it  an  immediate  and  instantaneous 
demonstration  to  them  of  itself.  Its  truth,  not  in 
itself  but  to  us,  so  much  depends  upon  our  own  attitude 
to  it,  and  the  consequent  quality  and  degree  of  our 
experience  of  it,  that  the  very  variableness  and  imper- 
fection of  our  faith  keeps  it  in  constant  doubt.  We 
must  remember  that  our  faith  is  our  part  in  the  matter, 
and  though  the  gift  even  of  it  is  from  God,  yet  the  use 
and  quality  or  degree  of  it  cannot  but  rest  with  us, 
who  are  most  uncertain  quantities.  The  truth  of 
faith  therefore,  or  the  truth  to  faith,  the  truth  of  God 
with  and  in  us  through  faith,  cannot  rest  upon  the 
variable  experience  of  individuals.  It  must  rest  upon 
the  true  consensus  of  experience,  which  can  only  mean, 
here  as  everywhere  else,  the  agreement  of  the  experi- 
ences that  are  the  most  genuine  and  the  most  complete. 
An  experience  of  the  personal  knowledge  of  God  which 
on  the  whole  persists,  and  gives  evidence  of  the  perma- 
nent quality  and  character  of  persistence,  is  entitled 
to  the  claim  of  all  the  external  verification  we  are  able 
to  give  it;  and  within  ourselves,  that  claim  may  always 


Way  of  the  Knowledge  of  God        205 

be  indefinitely  and  unlimitedly  confirmed  by  this  fact 
of  experience:  that  the  more  fully  we  are  our  best 
selves,  and  at  our  best,  the  more  fully  are  we  assured 
of  the  truth  of  the  knowledge  of  God;  and,  conversely, 
the  more  fully  we  know  God,  and  are  assured  of  it,  the 
nearer  we  are  to  our  best.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
more  we  drop  ourselves  in  the  scale  of  our  best  being 
and  experience,  the  more  certainly  and  strongly  does 
doubt  assail  the  validity  of  faith  and  the  truth  of  any 
real  knowledge  of  God.  I  explain  this  simply  by  the 
fact  that  truth  is  its  own  best,  and  only  ultimate,  proof; 
and  that  its  best,  if  not  only,  direct  evidence  to  us  we 
find  in  our  own  highest  conformity,  or  in  the  conformity 
of  our  highest  selves,  with  it. 

The  point  so  far  reached  is  this:  If  there  is  any  per- 
sonal expression  or  manifestation  of  God  at  all  within 
our  world,  it  can  be  only  in  and  through  a  person  or 
persons.  That  can  only  mean,  for  us,  through  men 
or  a  man.  God  cannot  manifest  Himself  in  mere 
nature,  either  in  the  whole  or  in  any  particular  fact 
or  phenomenon  of  it.  Because  Himself  means  His 
personality,  and  there  is  nowhere  in  nature  as  such 
any  "self"  or  "selfhood"  that  can  manifest  or  express 
personality.  If  there  be  such  a  thing  as  religion,  and 
if  religion  is  a  mutual  relation  of  persons,  in  which 
alone  God's  Self  is  manifested  in  our  world  of  men, 
then  it  is  only  in  men,  or  in  ourselves  that  we  shall  find 
God  in  the  full  sense  of  Himself,  as  distinguished  from 
His  acts.  And  if  not  only  our  natural  capacity  for 
knowing  God,  but  our  actual  knowledge  of  God  is,  as 


206  The  Reason  of  Life 

everything  else  with  us,  an  evolution,  then  we  shall 
expect  in  the  world  first  a  wide-spread,  if  not  universal, 
intimation  and  evidence  of  the  natural  instinct  and 
impulse  to  know  God.  This  natural  motion  or  emotion 
Godward  will  appear  very  unevenly  and  variedly  in 
individuals  and  in  races;  and  its  most  general,  rising 
even  to  universal,  manifestations  will  come  through 
transcendently  great  individuals,  as  well  as  through 
gifted  races  or  nations.  If,  answering  to  these  highest 
reaches  and  demands  Godward,  there  shall  come  sup- 
plies of  divine  response,  rising  to  the  height  of  real 
revelation  and  inspiration,  not  only  to  the  extraor- 
dinary individual,  but  to  elect  peoples,  and  to  the 
world,  it  will  be  what  was  to  be  expected. 

Once  admit  the  principle,  the  probability,  or  even 
possibility,  of  divine  Self-manifestations  or  Self-com- 
munications to  men,  and  where  shall  we  stop?  Concede 
that  God  has  in  any  way  breathed  or  uttered  Himself 
to  or  in  or  through  any  Abraham,  and  no  one  can  fix 
a  limit  to  the  mode  or  degree  of  His  Self-revelation  or 
Self-impartation  to  or  in  the  world  of  men.  Thence- 
forth we  can  only  wait  and  see  what,  as  matter  of  fact, 
it  will  please  Him  to  do  in  the  world. 

What  it  has  pleased  God  to  do  in  the  way  of  Self- 
revelation,  manifestation,  or  communication  in  the 
world,  is  just  what  Christianity  claims  to  be.  The 
divine  communication  comes  not  through  stupendous 
acts  or  phenomena;  God  is  not  in  the  storm  or  the 
earthquake  or  the  fire;  the  kingdom  of  God  cometh 
not  with  observation.  The  Self-manifestation  is  where 


Way  of  the  Knowledge  of  God        207 

alone  selfhood  can  be,  in  a  Person  and  persons.  God 
reveals  Himself  in  a  Person  in  Whom  Himself,  His 
personal  Self,  can  be,  and  be  seen;  and  through  Him — 
in  us,  in  whom  alone,  as  persons,  He  can  in  all  the 
world  of  our  experience  be  or  be  seen.  In  all  the  actual 
universe,  so  far  as  we  know  or  can  know  it,  God  is 
nowhere  directly  knowable  save  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  in  ourselves.  The  divine  Word  or  Son  who 
objectively  reveals  or  expresses  Him  to  us,  and  the 
divine  Spirit  who  subjectively  communicates  or  imparts 
Him  in  us,  are  the  only  possible  media  of  any  direct 
knowledge  or  experience  of  God. 

I  do  not  at  all  assert  that  there  was  or  is  no  knowledge 
or  life  of  God  outside  of  historical,  organized  or  insti- 
tutional, Christianity.  We  are  distinctly  told  that  the 
Logos  or  Word  of  God  was  in  the  world  always  and 
prior  to  His  taking  flesh  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ. 
And  no  less,  that  the  Spirit  of  God  is  wherever  the 
spirit  of  man  is  open  to  receive  Him.  The  Word  of 
God  is  the  utterance  of  Reason  to  reason,  the  Infinite 
to  the  finite;  just  as  the  Holy  Ghost  is  the  breath  or 
inspiration  of  Spirit  in  spirit,  the  Infinite  in  the  finite. 
And  whenever  or  wherever  in  the  human  mind  or  the 
human  heart  there  has  been  any  degree  of  response  to, 
there  has  been  just  so  much  communication  of  divine 
intelligence  and  grace.  Religion  before  and  in  Chris- 
tianity has  always  recognized  the  truth  that  God  is 
greater  than  any  given  or  appointed  system  of  human 
means,  and  that  His  love  and  grace  extend  far  beyond 
its  pale  and  are  as  wide  as  He  Himself.  I  would  deny 


208  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  presence  and  operation  of  God's  Word  and  Spirit 
nowhere  where  in  any  measure  or  degree  they  actually 
are.  What  I  affirm  is  only  that  God  —  Himself,  or 
personally  —  is  known  to  or  lives  in  us  only  through 
His  Word  and  Spirit,  and  only  in  the  response  of  our 
intelligence  and  affection  to  Him  through  these. 

This  brings  us  fairly  up  to  the  question  of  the  relation 
between  what  we  may  call  the  ordinary  manifestations 
of  God's  Word  and  Spirit  and  those  extraordinary  ones 
which  have  been  received  as  divine  revelations  or  inspi- 
rations; and  again,  between  even  these  latter  and  that 
complete  Self-manifestation  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ 
which  we  receive  as  the  Incarnation  of  God.  God 
from  the  beginning  of  the  world  has  spoken  to  us  in 
Prophets.  In  the  prophet  as  distinguished  from  the 
ordinary  "man  of  God,"  or  spiritual  man,  we  see  no 
more  uniqueness  in  the  communication  he  brings  to  us 
from  God,  than  in  his  own  elevation,  reach,  or  response 
toward  God:  He  brings  us  what  is  truer  from  God, 
because  he  himself  is  higher,  more  open  and  receptive 
from  God.  There  are  differences  and  degrees  among 
prophets  themselves,  and  so  among  their  prophecies. 
The  difference  here,  therefore,  is  one  not  in  kind  but  in 
degree.  In  great  measure  the  question  of  revelation 
and  inspiration  has  been  determined  by  reception  and 
consensus.  What  have  acquired  the  dignity  and  au- 
thority of  "Scriptures,"  New  or  Old,  were  practically 
so  decided  and  accepted.  The  spirit  of  man  "  sets  its 
seal "  upon  what  is  the  Spirit  of  God.  There  is  more 
truth  and  authority  in  the  common  or  collective  sense 


Way  of  the  Knowledge  of  God        209 

of  the  human  spirit  in  time  and  space  than  in  the  highest 
individual  reach  of  the  highest  men.  Even  though  the 
highest  gifts  of  God  do  come  to  us  through  the  highest 
men  yet  we  of  the  ordinary  or  common  body  of  men 
are  commanded  to  try  the  spirits  whether  they  be  of 
God. 

If  this  be  true  of  the  high,  what  shall  we  say  of  the 
Highest?  There  is  certainly  a  likeness  and  community 
of  kind  between  Jesus  Christ  and  all  those  who  before 
Him,  or  apart  from  Him,  have  manifested  God  in  the 
world.  If  this  is  not  so,  then  in  the  most  vital  and 
essential  respects  He  was  not  man  as  we  are  —  which 
would  mean  that  He  was  not  man  at  all.  We  need  to 
know  our  Lord  in  His  sameness  with  us,  if  we  would 
truly  interpret  His  uniqueness  or  elevation  above  us. 

The  issue  at  the  present  time  is  between  the  proper 
or  essential  deity  of  our  Lord's  Person  and  what  there 
is  a  general  disposition  to  concede  as  His  divinity  in  a 
lower  sense.  This  lower  divinity,  in  an  unquestionably 
true  sense,  may  be  defined  or  described  somewhat  as 
follows,  in  terms  too  of  an  at  least  partial  truth  of  the 
Incarnation:  How  shall  we  define  the  precise  end  of 
what  we  call  the  Incarnation?  Is  it  not,  that  God,  in 
a  sense  or  measure,  becomes  human,  becomes  man,  in 
order  that  man,  also  in  a  sense  or  measure,  may  become 
divine?  The  consummation  of  the  predestined,  and 
in  the  highest  sense  natural,  union  and  unity  of  God 
and  man  can  result  only  through  an  entrance  of  Deity 
into  humanity,  and  a  consequent  participation  by 
humanity  in  somewhat  of  the  nature,  character,  and 
15 


210  The  Reason  of  Life 

life  of  Deity.  This  is  not  the  same  as,  it  is  something 
more  than,  what  is  ordinarily  meant  by  the  "natural 
divinity  "  of  man.  That  man,  as  such,  or  by  nature,  is 
divine,  has  certainly  a  truth  in  it,  if  we  are  to  hold  with 
the  best  philosophy  that  "finite  spirits  (ourselves)  are 
not  mere  products  of  nature,  but  children  of  God"; 
but  that  can  signify  nothing  more  than  a  potential 
divinity,  the  natural  capacity  for  what  is  divine,  which 
however  can  become  actual  in  us  only  through  personal 
union  and  unity  with  Deity.  St.  Paul  expresses  the 
matter  when  he  describes  us  as  having  been  "pre- 
destined of  God  unto  sonship  through  Jesus  Christ 
unto  Himself"  —  a  predestination  which  must  have 
been  grounded  in  nature,  though  realized  only  through 
personal  act  and  accomplished  relation  to  God.  It  is 
this  personal  and  accomplished  sonship  to  God,  actually 
realized  for  us,  and  to  be  realized  in  us,  in  Jesus  Christ, 
that  I  call  "in  the  highest  sense"  natural:  because  it 
expresses,  not  alone  our  potential,  but  our  accomplished 
and  completed  nature.  We  are  not,  and  cannot  be, 
(actually)  divine  in  ourselves;  we  are  so,  in  faith,  and 
shall  be  so  in  fact,  in  Jesus  Christ. 

Now  if  Jesus  Christ  was  the  great  leader,  founder, 
author,  finisher  of  our  actual  and  accomplished  destiny, 
of  our  perfected  sonship  to  God,  of  all  the  divinity  of 
which  our  finite  nature  is  susceptible,  if  He  was  the 
first-fruits  from  among  us,  the  first-begotten  into  the 
fulness  of  the  divine  nature  and  life  —  how  shall  we 
not  say  that  His  divinity  was  ours,  ours  in  kind,  ours 
only  accomplished  and  completed  in  degree?  It  is  a 


Way  of  the  Knowledge  of  God 

precious  truth  —  never  to  be  surrendered,  and  ever 
more  and  more  to  be  appropriated  and  realized  by  us 
— that  all  that  is  humanly  Christ  or  Christ's  is  eternally 
and  essentially  ours.  He  is  our  holiness,  our  righteous- 
ness, our  life,  our  new  birth  from  above,  our  resurrection 
from  the  dead.  If  in  any  of  these  acts,  characters,  or 
respects,  He  was  not  like  us,  was  not  actually  we,  — 
then  how  can  we  be  He,  and  all  that  is  His  be  ours? 

I  hold  then,  with  all  my  heart,  the  human  divinity  of 
our  Lord,  the  divinity  that  was,  essentially  and  in  kind, 
ours  in  Him,  and  is  His  in  us.  But  does  this  contradict 
or  deny  also  the  essential  personal  Deity  of  our  Lord? 
Assuming  that  fact,  and  all  the  truth  of  the  Incarnation 
as  the  Church  holds  and  defines  it,  what  does  all  that 
has  been  said  express  or  affirm?  Simply  that  the 
Eternal  Word  of  God,  in  becoming  Man,  became 
"very  man,"  as  much  "one  with  us"  in  His  human- 
ity, as  "  one  with  God  "  in  His  deity. 

The  strength  of  those  who  hold  the  human  divinity 
of  our  Lord  as  against  His  essential  deity  lies  in  the 
fact  that  we  have  been  too  much  holding  the  latter 
against  the  former,  instead  of  equally  holding  both  — 
and  both  as  equally  necessary  to  the  full  truth  and  end 
of  the  Incarnation. 

I  see  in  Jesus  Christ  the  accomplished  and  complete 
truth  of  God  in  man,  and  equally  the  accomplished 
truth  of  man  in  God:  neither  of  these  truths  would  be 
accomplished  or  complete  without  the  other.  There 
is  the  Fact  of  Life  with  which  we  have  to  do.  It  is 
impossible  for  me,  it  is  impossible  for  Christianity  or 


The  Reason  of  Life 

the  Church,  to  lower  that  fact  on  either  side  of  its 
One  indivisible  Truth.  I  see  myself  in  Jesus  Christ, 
and  equally  I  see  God  in  Him;  I  none  the  less  feel 
my  infinite  distance  from  God,  in  also  feeling  His 
infinite  nearness  to  and  oneness  with  me.  I  finally 
and  forever  refuse  to  see  in  Jesus  Christ,  in  the  One 
Person  of  Jesus  Christ,  only  the  finite  human  person 
myself,  or  a  finite  human  person  like  myself,  how- 
ever exalted  —  and  not  also  the  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Personal  Word  and  Son  of  God,  fulfilling  Himself  in 
humanity  and  in  me. 


XVII 
WHOM  ELSE  BUT  GOD? 

THE  vital  truths  of  Christianity  the  most  open  to 
speculative  question  and  doubt  are  the  personality  of 
God  and  the  deity  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  practical 
response  of  the  human  soul  to  those  questions  and 
doubts  may  be  expressed  in  two  utterances  taken  re- 
spectively from  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  I  do 
not  profess  to  give  the  immediate  or  exact  interpre- 
tation of  the  passages  taken  in  their  connection,  but 
only  to  apply  the  words  to  the  expression  of  the 
complete  truths  under  consideration. 

In  reply  to  all  questionings  as  to  the  God  of  Abra- 
ham's faith,  or  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  the  God  and  Father  whom  He  professed  to 
know  and  to  reveal,  the  general  answer  of  the  soul  of 
religion  is:  If  not  Him,  then  Whom  have  we  — or 
What?  "Whom  have  I  in  heaven  but  Thee,  O  Lord? 
And  there  is  none  upon  earth  that  I  desire  beside 
Thee." 

Giving  our  own  widest  interpretation  to  the  word 
"  heaven,"  we  may  mean  by  it,  primarily,  all  that  is 
outside  of  our  world  of  sensible  or  natural  experience, 
all  that  is  matter  of  faith  and  not  of  sight  or  science. 
There  is  no  one  who  denies  the  existence  of  such 

213 


214  The  Reason  of  Life 

"  another"  world;  denial  cannot  go  beyond  the  im- 
possibility of  any  knowledge  or  experience  of  it,  any 
communication  or  intercourse  with  it.  All  beginning 
or  end,  all  substance  or  cause,  all  ultimate  or  essential 
reality  belong  to  it  —  none  of  which  we  may  know, 
but  all  which  we  must  in  some  way  admit.  Religion, 
the  religion  of  history  and  of  civilization,  has  written 
upon  that  other  world,  which  is  the  postulate  and 
correlative  of  this  one,  its  substance,  cause,  and 
meaning,  the  primal  ground  of  all  reality,  the  name  of 
God. 

Religion  has  gone  further  and  transcended  the 
notion  that  the  world  of  the  beyond,  or  of  God,  is  one 
of  mere  speculative  inference  and  of  agnostic  admis- 
sion. It  claims  that,  not  merely  has  God  not  left 
Himself  without  witness  within  and  through  the  world 
of  sense,  but  that  He  has  not  left  us  without  means  and 
capacity  for  more  direct  and  personal  relation  and 
intercourse  with  Himself  in  the  world  of  spirit. 

Heaven  then  is  not  a  region,  a  world,  without  and 
beyond  the  reach  of  human  experience,  a  sphere  of 
being  unseen  and  unseeable  in  itself,  known  only  as 
inference  from,  as  cause  and  condition  of  the  things 
that  are  seen.  It  is  indeed  without  and  above  all 
purely  sensible  experience:  the  search  for  it  which  we 
call  natural  and,  at  its  best,  scientific  will  rightly  dis- 
cover itself  agnostic  with  regard  to  it.  The  question, 
of  which  the  very  fact  of  religion  assumes  the  affirma- 
tive, is  whether  there  is  not  an  experience  of  God  and 
heaven  that  transcends  mere  nature  and  pure  science. 


Whom  Else  But  God?  215 

If  we  are  to  admit  God  at  all  as  the  possible  or  prob- 
able postulate  of  the  things  we  know  —  some  postu- 
late being  a  necessity  of  thought,  and  none  other 
more  probable  or  credible  —  then  it  is  out  of  the  ques- 
tion to  assume  that  God  shall  have  produced  finite 
spirits  capable  and  desirous  of  personally  knowing 
Him,  and  then  have  remained  personally  unknowable 
by  or  to  them.  We  assume  then,  with  religion,  that 
there  are  divine  as  well  as  human  means  and  possibil- 
ities of  knowing  God.  So  far  from  knowledge  mean- 
ing necessarily  adequate  or  complete,  or  even  at  all 
developed,  knowledge,  it  may  begin  in  absolutely 
the  most  elementary  way,  as  a  bare  potentiality.  The 
infant  knows  its  mother  from  the  moment  of  birth,  by 
feeling  if  not  by  cognition  —  but  by  a  feeling  which  is 
already  the  beginning  of  cognition.  That  human 
knowledge  of  God,  human  experience  of  and  associa- 
tion with  God,  should  have  begun  in  a  thoroughly 
childlike  way;  that  when  humanity  was  a  child,  it 
should  have  spoken  as  a  child,  felt  as  a  child,  and 
thought  as  a  child,  is  just  what  our  evolutional  science 
or  philosophy  should  teach  us  to  expect. 

By  heaven  then,  let  us,  for  the  tune,  mean  this 
much  more:  not  merely  the  world  that,  in  itself,  tran- 
scends sense  and  science;  but  the  world  that  also  to  us 
is  knowable,  however  little  it  may  be  known,  by  faith 
—  meaning  by  faith  all  sense  or  faculty  of  the  divine, 
of  God  and  the  things  of  God,  all  potential  citizen- 
ship in  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  that  may  be  proper 
to  humanity.  Whatever  of  defect,  error,  irrational- 


216  The  Reason  of  Life 

ity,  or  even  immorality,  might  by  any  stretch  of  con- 
ception or  assertion  be  alleged  against  the  God  of  the 
Old  Testament,  it  would  be  easy  to  demonstrate  that 
the  God  of  religious  history  as  a  whole,  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments  and  of  the  Christian  Church  is  one 
and  the  same  God.  We  have  only  to  remember  that 
the  God  of  the  Old  Testament  is  only  the  Old  Tes- 
tament's conception  of  God,  just  as  the  God  of  the 
Church  today  is  only  the  Church's  present  realization 
and  understanding  of  God.  No  one  would  claim 
that  we  know  God  unto  perfection,  or  that  we 
ought  not  to  be  knowing  Him  more  and  more  per- 
fectly as  humanity  and  the  Church  grow  older 
and  more  experienced  in  spiritual  or  divine  things. 
However  perfectly  God  was  in  Jesus  Christ,  no  more 
was  or  is  actually  communicated  through  Christ  to 
the  Church  than  was  or  is  actually  received  and  pos- 
sessed by  the  Church.  No  one  claims  that  we  know 
either  God  or  Jesus  Christ,  or  the  full  power  and  life 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  unto  perfection.  All  that  we  do 
claim  is,  that  the  more  of  the  Eternal  Spirit  of  God  we 
have  in  ourselves,  the  more  we  know  God  in  Jesus 
Christ,  and  the  more  we  know  God  in  Christ,  the  more 
we  know  of  God  in  Himself. 

Who  then,  or  What,  is  the  God  of  our  religious  his- 
tory, or  of  our  historical  experience?  I  take  the  Bible 
now  for  no  more  than  Religion's  own  Record  or  History 
of  Itself,  its  Autobiography.  In  tracing  the  spiritual 
evolution  of  the  conception  or  knowledge  of  God  we 
are  to  remember  that  it  is  not  the  making  or  shaping 


Whom  Else  but  God?  217 

of  objective  truth  or  reality  that  we  are  engaged  or 
concerned  with,  but  only  the  story  of  our  own  appre- 
hension and  understanding  of  the  truth.  We  need 
make  no  further  claim  for  that  than  that  it  is  based 
upon  a  right  principle,  has  on  the  whole  advanced 
along  a  right  line,  and  moves  toward  the  right  end. 
The  God  of  Christianity  may  be  a  truer  God  than  that 
of  Hebraism,  as  the  true  God  is  truer  than  as  we  know 
and  worship  Him;  but  the  more  or  less  truth,  the 
relativity,  is  in  us  not  in  the  reality.  It  is  the  same 
God  all  the  way  through,  imperfectly  and  progressively 
conceived  and  known. 

Let  us  glance  briefly  at  the  history  of  the  idea  or 
knowledge  of  God  from  the  beginning  of  that  Record 
of  it  to  which  we  attach  the  name  of  Scripture  and  the 
sacredness  of  Revelation.  Its  first  essential  feature 
is  found  in  the  fact,  that  in  the  very  terms  "  Creation  " 
and  "Creator"  is  involved  and  expressed  the  truth  of 
a  rational,  spiritual,  we  may  say  personal,  origin,  mean- 
ing, and  destination  of  the  world.  From  the  begin- 
ning the  first  word  of  religion  has  been  that  which  is 
still  the  first  article  of  every  Christian  creed.  The 
world  begins  and  ends  with,  is  upheld  and  governed 
by,  is  the  expression  of  Reason  and  Purpose.  God  is 
neither  identified  or  confounded  with  the  world,  nor 
on  the  other  hand  separated  or  excluded  from  it.  His 
Mind,  Will,  or  Word  is  the  immanent  and  causative 
principle  of  it,  while  in  Himself  He  as  actually  tran- 
scends it  as  we  do  our  acts  or  expressions.  We  are  not 
saying  too  much  but  too  little  when  we  ascribe  to  God, 


218  The  Reason  of  Life 

in  terms  of  ourselves,  intelligence,  affection,  will,  pur- 
pose, character  —  in  a  word,  personality. 

Religious  history  has  from  the  beginning  had  most 
to  do  with  the  more  distinctively  spiritual  side  or  aspect 
of  the  divine  nature.  Its  primal  quality  is  Holiness. 
Holiness  may  be  defined  simply  as  "what  God  is";  as 
its  correlative  and  contradictory,  sin,  is  "what  is  con- 
trary to  God."  Holiness  is  not  simply  a  law;  it  is  a 
spirit,  a  disposition,  a  nature;  and  sin  is  not  merely 
transgression  of  a  divine  law,  it  is  violation  of  the 
divine  Spirit,  a  break  with  the  divine  nature  and 
disposition. 

The  Old  Testament  had  fully  attained  to  and  worked 
out  the  truth  that  Virtue,  Morality,  Righteousness  is 
at  once  the  law  of  God  and  the  law  of  life.  Right- 
eousness, an  obedience  to  God's  will  growing  out  of 
oneness  with  God's  nature  and  participation  in  God's 
spirit,  is  that  which  alone  truly  makes  or  exalts  either 
the  individual  or  the  nation.  The  world  means  God, 
means  Holiness,  means  Righteousness  —  and  is  pre- 
destined to  end  in  the  New  Heavens  and  the  New 
Earth  wherein  shall  dwell  Righteousness. 

The  Old  Testament  had  already  pierced  to  the  heart 
of  the  matter  and  recognized,  not  only  the  fact,  that 
God  is  holy,  but  the  truth  of  what  holiness  is.  To  say 
that  God  is  holy,  is  simply  to  say  that  God  is  "what 
He  is."  It  may  mean,  in  addition,  that  God  wills  and 
requires  in  us  what  He  is  in  Himself;  that  He  condi- 
tions the  blessings  and  blessedness  of  life  upon  our 
sharing  His  spirit  and  keeping  His  law:  "The  right- 


Whom  Else  but  God?  219 

ecus  Lord  loveth  righteousness."  But  to  say  so  much 
is  not  to  say  what  holiness  or  righteousness  —  and,  in 
the  true  sense,  life  and  blessedness  —  are.  The  Old 
Testament,  if  it  did  not  attain  the  full  and  final  mani- 
festation and  expression,  yet  implicitly  included  the 
substance  of  the  truth,  that  God  is  Love:  that  holiness, 
righteousness,  life,  blessedness,  are  all  rooted  and 
grounded  in  that  Love  which  is  the  one  perfect  bond, 
and  one  bond  of  perfectness,  which,  as  God  Himself, 
is  the  All  in  all. 

But  what  most  distinctively  the  history  of  the  Old 
Testament  had  to  contribute  to  the  growth  of  religion 
was  the  development  of  the  principle  of  faith  as  the 
human  medium  or  means  of  participating  in  the  divine 
spirit  and  nature  and  so  sharing  the  divine  activity 
and  life.  A  function  supposes  an  organ,  as  also  an 
organ  assumes  a  function.  As  a  matter  of  creative 
evolution,  or  evolutional  creation,  it  makes  no  differ- 
ence which  was  prior  and  produced  the  other.  The 
point  is  the  present  fact  or  actuality  of  personal  re- 
lationship and  intercommunion  with  God.  If  religion 
is  or  exists  at  all,  and  is  an  integral  factor  in  human 
life,  and  if  it  is  a  matter  between  us  and  God  —  "  God 
and  the  soul,  the  soul  and  its  God"  —  then  God  is 
no  mere  conjectural  inference  from  known  facts,  no 
mere  conclusion  of  speculative  reason,  but  an  object 
of  actual  experience  and  direct  knowledge.  In  some 
way  the  Eternal  Spirit  bears  witness  with  our  finite 
spirits  of  the  relationship  between  them,  and  the  mind 
and  affections,  the  will  and  purpose,  the  actions  and 


220  The  Reason  of  Life 

character,  the  nature  and  life  of  God  have  entrance 
into  and  influence  and  shape  those  of  men. 

The  organ  or  function  of  the  divine  within  the 
human,  our  faculty  or  capacity  for  God,  however 
defined,  we  call  in  general  faith.  It  is  a  matter  of 
secondary  importance  in  what  sense  an  Abraham 
walked  with  God,  or  talked  with  God,  or  was  the 
friend  of  God.  It  is  enough  that  he  was  a  developed 
instance,  the  type,  of  an  actual  spiritual  or  personal 
association  with  and  knowledge  of  God,  potential  in 
all  men  but  most  highly  evolved  in  him.  The  claim  is 
simply  this;  that  human  experience,  human  influence, 
direction,  and  end,  is  not  only  through  sense  and  self, 
but  comes  also  from  without  and  above  and  leads  and 
lifts  us  beyond  ourselves  and  all  our  mere  sensible 
conditions.  That  faith  in  its  origins  and  earliest 
forms  should  have  been  simple  and  elementary,  that 
its  historical  traditions  and  records  should  have  been 
expressed  in  terms  of  the  ideas  and  general  knowledge 
of  the  time,  is  too  patent  a  necessity  to  insist  upon. 
The  wonder  is  not  in  its  childlike  expression  or  in  its 
manifest  incompletenesses  and  imperfections.  It  is 
rather  that  underneath  these  it  was  in  principle  and 
in  essence  so  infallibly  and  demonstratively,  and  there- 
fore so  persistently  and  permanently  true. 

The  faith  of  Abraham  —  as  much  the  father  of 
those  who  believe  as  Aristotle  is  still  master  of  all  who 
think  —  is  essentially  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  that 
is  forever  the  faith  of  all  who  truly  know  God.  The 
story  of  Abraham,  no  matter  how  we  criticise,  explain, 


Whom  Else  but  God? 

or  interpret  it,  contains  in  germ  the  perfect  principle 
of  salvation  by  faith  in  Jesus  Christ.  To  the  devel- 
oped Christian  experience  and  consciousness,  it  is 
absurd  to  think  of  human  salvation  —  which  means 
spiritual  and  moral,  or  personal,  redemption,  com- 
pletion, and  destination  —  by  either  mere  process  of 
nature  or  mere  act  of  man  himself.  We  are  so  mani- 
festly in  no  sense  either  all  ourselves,  or  capable  of 
becoming  so  of  ourselves;  we  are  so  transcendently 
of  God,  and  God  is  so  transcendent  a  part  of  ourselves, 
that  salvation  in  any  sense,  of  redemption,  completion, 
or  perfection,  is  unthinkable  without  or  apart  from 
Him.  When  we  say  that  to  know  God  is  eternal 
life,  we  mean  that,  in  the  very  deepest  sense  of  know- 
ing, we  only  know  ourselves  as  we  know  God:  God  is 
so  much  of  ourselves,  so  much  ourselves,  that  we  do 
not  know  ourselves  at  all  out  of  or  apart  from  Him. 

More  than  this,  and  consequent  upon  this  —  the 
faith  of  Abraham  teaches  us  that,  apart  from  the 
knowledge  and  love  and  grace  and  obedience,  the  holi- 
ness and  righteousness  and  life  of  God,  we  are  as  in- 
evitably sinners  against  Him  and  ourselves;  that  is, 
that  without  faith,  which  brings  us  into  relation  with 
all  these  and  makes  us  the  living  subjects  of  them,  we 
are  as  incapable  of  being  what  God  is  and  so  becoming 
our  true  selves  —  as,  without  the  exercise  of  right 
reason  and  free  will,  we  could  rise  above  mere  animals 
and  become  truly  men. 

What  historical  religion  owes  to  Abraham,  or  to  the 
type  of  faith  represented  by  him,  is  the  defining  of  the 


222  The  Reason  of  Life 

proper  personal  attitude  of  man  toward  God.  This 
attitude  has  been  expressed  by  the  term  dependence, 
by  which  must  be  understood  nothing  less  than,  not 
only  the  entire  respect  in  which,  but  no  less  the  com- 
plete extent  to  which  God  constitutes  actual  part  of 
our  nature  and  must  enter  personally  into  our  lives, 
in  order  that  we  may  become  all  ourselves  and  attain 
all  our  ends.  To  say  that  "in  Him  we  live  and  move 
and  have  OUT  being,"  as  the  expression  of  a  mere 
immanent  or  natural  fact,  as  a  declaration  of  the 
speculative  truth  or  belief  that  God  is  the  underlying 
and  containing  cause  or  condition  of  all  that  is,  is  a 
presupposition  of  religion.  But  it  is  not  religion  merely 
as  such;  it  only  becomes  religion  as,  through  spiritual 
and  moral  consciousness,  acceptance,  and  experience, 
the  mere  natural  fact  passes  on  up  and  transmutes 
itself  into  personal  act  —  that  is,  as  we  ourselves  in 
our  nature,  and  not  only  our  nature  in  us,  are  person- 
ally living  and  moving,  finding,  possessing,  and  exer- 
cising our  whole  being,  in  God.  There  is  no  religion 
in  the  mere  immanent  relation  between  us  and  God, 
nor  in  any  merely  speculative  or  even  moral  attitude 
toward  that  relation.  All  personal  relation  whatever 
is  transcendent,  not  immanent;  and  only  in  such 
personal  relation  between  us  and  God  does  religion 
really  consist  or  exist. 

In  the  story  of  faith  from  Abraham  to  Jesus  Christ 
we  may  trace  the  historical  evolution  of  the  attitude  or 
relation  of  man  to  God  through  faith.  Abraham 
simply  lives  in  the  consciousness  of  God,  believes, 


Whom  Else  but  God?  223 

trusts,  follows,  and  obeys  God,  finds  all  his  good  in 
Him,  is  the  recipient  of  all  blessings  from  Him.  It  is 
an  implicit  and  childlike  faith;  and  in  such  an  integral, 
undeveloped  faith  there  is  the  germ  and  promise  of  all 
life  and  blessedness.  But  the  faith  of  Abraham  and 
that  of  Jesus  Christ  are  far  apart  in  the  evolutional 
development  and  completeness  of  an  identical  prin- 
ciple. In  both  there  is  the  necessary  and  inseparable 
element  of  the  trial,  proving,  and  perfecting  of  faith; 
but  while  the  faith  of  Abraham  moves  on  elementary 
and  temporal  lines,  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ  compasses 
and  accomplishes  the  entire  eternal  and  divine  destiny 
of  man. 

What  is  the  common  principle  of  all  true  faith,  but 
is  realized  and  accomplished  fact  only  in  Jesus  Christ, 
is  that  truth  of  the  proper  relation  between  God  and 
man  of  which  we  are  in  search.  Whether  from  the 
standpoint  of  ethics  or  of  religion,  no  human  being  — 
but  One  —  stands  even  to  himself,  to  the  accomplish- 
ment of  his  law  and  the  perfection  of  his  spirit,  in  the 
relation  or  attitude  of  actual  fulfilment.  If  we  are  to 
be  judged  by  any  standard  that  humanity  has  ever 
set,  or  can  set  itself,  there  is  no  man  that  can  be  justi- 
fied by  his  works  —  that  is  to  say,  by  actual  obedience 
to  his  own  law  and  by  actual  conformity  to  the  spirit 
which  he  enjoins  upon  himself.  If  he  requires  of 
himself  only  a  perfect  manhood  or  virtue,  personal 
and  social  —  courage,  temperance,  justice,  generosity 
—  there  is  none  that  can  justify  himself  by  actual 
standing  in  these  qualities,  otherwise  than  by  either 


224  The  Reason  of  Life 

unjustifiably  lowering  them  to  a  very  relative,  average 
or  comparative,  standard,  or  else  by  frankly  confess- 
ing that  these  virtues,  as  virtue  in  general,  are  only 
maxims  or  ideals  to  him,  expressions  of  what  he  would 
be  and  very  far  beyond  what  he  is.  Kant  is  scien- 
tifically exact  in  the  assertion  that  man  is  the  natural 
subject  of  an  infinite  or  perfect  law.  Before  such  a 
law  he  can  stand  justified  even  to  himself  only  by  an 
illicit  lowering  his  conception  of  the  law  to  the  obe- 
dience he  is  willing  to  render  it. 

What  does  this  mean  but  that  to  himself,  to  the 
law  of  his  own  being  and  the  spirit  of  his  own  life,  man 
can  stand  hi  no  relation  and  can  set  up  no  claim  of 
fulfilment  or  actuality?  Himself  is  ever,  at  the  best, 
only  a  matter  of  faith  and  hope  to  him.  He  has  ever 
to  be  justified,  not  by  what  he  is,  but  only  by  what  he 
would  be,  by  the  unattained  maxim  and  ideal  of  his 
life,  by  what  he  believes  in,  and  hopes  for,  and  loves. 
Justification  by  faith,  properly  and  scientifically 
understood,  is  the  principle  of  all  human  life,  progress, 
or  destiny.  We  are  forever  only  potentially  and  pro- 
phetically, never  actually,  ourselves:  we  shall  be  that 
only  in  the  complete  possession  of  our  spirits  and  in 
the  full  realization  of  our  law.  P1 

It  is  here  that  religion  comes  in  as  the  only  solution 
and  completion  of  ethics.  The  trouble  is  that  no 
natural,  human,  merely  moral  or  ethical  law  is  discov- 
erable that  will  fit  man  only  as  he  is.  And  the  reason 
is  that  man  never  is  only  as  he  is :  he  never  is  as  brave, 
or  as  temperate,  or  as  just,  or  as  generous,  or  as  any- 


Whom  Else  but  God?  225 

thing,  as  he  ought  to  be.  His  true  being  and  self  is 
always  something  beyond  what  he  is.  That  "  always 
beyond "  has  to  be  taken  into  account  in  the  definition 
of  his  law  and  in  the  measure  and  estimate  of  himself. 
And  there  is  no  limit  here,  or  in  present  human  experi- 
ence, to  the  "  beyond  ";  no  man  on  earth  ever  is  as  wise 
or  true  or  right  or  good  or  great  as  he  ought  to  be,  and 
the  nearer  he  is  to  any  of  these,  the  further  off  he 
knows  himself  to  be.  How  then  shall  we  go  about 
constructing  an  ethics  or  a  law  which  shall  just  express 
what  we  ought  to  be  and  therefore  can  be  here?  ,. 

The  universal  natural  law  of  evolution  seems  to  give 
us  a  clue  to  at  least  the  right  statement  of  the  facts 
of  the  case.  Man  passes  from  any  previous  lower  stage 
into  that  of  reason  and  freedom,  or  of  personality,  by 
not  merely  the  acquired  potentiality,  but  the  actual 
exercise  of  his  right  reason  and  his  free  will.  In  the 
necessary,  and  necessarily  long,  process  of  progressive 
reason  and  freedom,  man  must  become  and  be  a  law 
to  himself,  must  be  autonomous.  His  reason,  his  free- 
dom, his  personality  can  exist  at  all,  only  as  his  own. 
Reason  and  freedom  are  the  only  proper  subjects  of 
law,  and  the  obedience  of  these  is  its  only  proper  cor- 
relative. There  could  be  no  true  law  if  there  were  no 
rational  and  free  obedience,  but  neither  could  there  be 
reason  or  freedom  without  a  law  of  obedience  and 
without  obedience  to  the  law.  The  function  of  reason 
and  freedom  is  obedience  to  absolute  truth  and  infi- 
nite right. 

As  reason  and  freedom  progress,  men  more  and  more 
16 


226  The  Reason  of  Life 

discover  at  once  the  absolute  obligation  and  the  infi- 
nite transcendence  of  law.  There  is  no  end  to  either 
truth  or  righteousness,  and  there  is  no  compromise 
with  either.  Does  nature,  and  our  own  nature  — 
does  God  subject  us  to  an  "  ought "  to  which  there  is 
no  corresponding  "can"? 

Thus  it  is  that  the  true  ethics  of  humanity  drives 
us  to  religion.  The  only  law  for  man  is  one  impossible 
for  him  either  in  or  of  himself.  And  the  explanation 
is  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  man  in  or  of  himself: 
as  a  natural  fact  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being 
only  hi  God.  And  no  less,  as  a  spiritual  act  or  actor, 
as  a  rational,  free,  and  moral  personality,  as  son  of 
God,  as  part  and  parcel  of  God  Himself,  he  cannot 
obey  his  law,  he  cannot  fulfil  his  nature,  he  cannot 
be  himself  apart  from  God.  The  greatness  and  the 
littleness  of  man  are  equally  incontestable  facts.  No 
matter  what  we  are,  we  have  no  origin  and  no  destiny 
but  God.  Man  can  propose  no  other  end  or  purpose 
to  himself  than  that  perfection  of  truth,  of  righteous- 
ness, of  love  and  goodness,  that  fulness  and  complete- 
ness of  divine  life  which  is  God  Himself.  We  cannot 
think  of  God  but  as  the  Infinite  of  all  that  we  our- 
selves ought  to  be;  nor  of  our  own  true  and  right  selves 
otherwise  than  in  terms  of  what  God  is.  As  children 
of  God  we  can  have  no  other  end  or  destiny  than  to 
share  His  nature  and  live  His  life;  and  we  can  fix  no 
other  limit  to  that  aim  and  intention  than  "to  be  per- 
fect as  our  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect." 

This  is,  of  course,  assigning  to  man  an  infinite  law 


Whom  Else  but  God  ?  227 

and  an  impossible  obedience;  but  it  is  based  upon  the 
fact  that  he  is  partaker  of  an  infinite  nature  and  the 
subject  of  an  immortal  life.  What  else  or  less  can  be 
meant  by  the  now  largely  professed  faith  in  the  natural 
divinity  of  man?  Once  admit  for  man  the  fact  of  an 
infinite  or  endless  law,  and  express  obedience  to  or 
f  ulfilment  of  that  law  by  the  term  "  righteousness  "  — 
and  in  what  possible  relation  can  a  man  stand  to  his 
own  righteousness  but  that  of  faith,  hope,  and  love? 
What  man  can  feel  himself  "  justified,"  or  lay  claim  to 
a  righteousness  satisfactory  and  acceptable  to  either 
God  or  himself?  "Abraham  believed  God,  and  it  was 
accounted  to  him  for  righteousness:"  the  germ  of  the 
whole  truth  of  justification  by  faith  was  as  truly  con- 
tained in  the  attitude  of  Abraham,  as  the  whole  truth 
itself  was  perfectly  fulfilled  and  expressed  by  the  act 
and  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  no  way  of 
actual  righteousness  but  through  identification  of  our- 
selves by  faith  with  the  righteousness  of  God  in  Jesus 
Christ:  which  means  simply,  that  there  is  no  way  of 
obeying  our  law,  fulfilling  our  nature,  being  ourselves, 
otherwise  than  by  faith  identifying  ourselves  with 
God  Himself  in  Christ. 

"Whom  have  we  in  heaven  but  Thee,  O  Lord?" 
The  Psalmist  is  right  in  asserting  that  we  have,  and 
can  have,  none  other.  The  common  sense  and  tradi- 
tional faith  of  historical  religion  has  made  many  mis- 
takes about  God,  but  underneath  and  through  all  the 
God  of  its  faith  has  been  the  One  only  true  God,  to 
know  Whom  is  life,  and  to  serve  Whom  is  freedom. 


228  The  Reason  of  Life 

And  not  only  have  we  none  other,  but  the  Psalmist  is 
right  too  in  asserting  that  we  have  Him.  The  God 
whom  Abraham  believed  is  the  God  whom  Jesus  Christ 
so  perfectly  knew  as  to  personally  manifest  and  reveal; 
it  is  the  God  whom,  through  the  Word  without  us  and 
the  Spirit  within  us,  we  so  know,  that  He  is  no  longer 
merely  God  —  but  our  God,  substance  of  our  life  and 
matter  of  ourselves. 


XVIII 
WHAT  ELSE  BUT  CHRIST? 

I  SAID  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  chapter  that  in 
two  verses  of  Scripture  we  may  express  our  final  atti- 
tude toward  all  questionings  of  the  essential  truths  of 
Christianity,  the  personality  of  God  and  the  deity  of 
Jesus  Christ.  The  first  was,  "Whom  have  I  in  heaven 
but  Thee ! "  —  by  which  simple  words  I  would  under- 
stand two  things:  First,  that  in  the  world  beyond  or 
without  sense  and  sen1,  which  no  one  can  deny,  and  of 
which  no  one  is  independent,  there  is  none  else  and 
nought  else  that  we  have  or  can  have  but  only  the  One 
God  of  our  historical  religion.  In  the  second  place, 
that  we  have  Him,  by  an  actual  communication  and 
impartation  of  Himself,  and  by  an  actual  consciousness 
and  experience  of  our  own,  against  which  no  counter 
evidence  or  reasoning  from  without  will  be  of  any 
avail.  The  least  fact  of  an  actual  experience  is  proof 
against  the  strongest  conclusion  of  mere  speculation; 
and  there  is  no  argument  against  the  essential  fact  or 
facts  of  religion  that  is  not  speculative.  The  lack  of 
experience  or  evidence  in  some,  no  matter  how  many, 
will  never  disprove  the  fact  of  it  in  others,  no  matter 
how  few.  As  long  as  we  have  God  in  the  world,  God 

229 


230  The  Reason  of  Life 

will  be  in  the  world  of  those  who  have  Him.  And 
they  will  not  give  Him  up  for  the  simple  reason  that 
the  Psalmist  gives:  "Whom  else  have  they  in  heaven, 
in  all  the  '  beyond '  of  their  poor  selves  and  their  inchoate 
conditions  or  attainments?  Whom  else  have  they  in 
the  heaven  of  redemption  and  completion,  and  what 
is  there  on  earth  to  be  desired  beside  Him?" 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  other  words  in  which  we  may 
no  less  simply  and  satisfactorily  express  our  reply  to 
the  doubts  and  questionings  that  assail  us  on  every 
side.  In  a  turning-point  of  our  Lord's  ministry,  the 
high  claims  and  strong  assertions  which  He  was  begin- 
ning to  make  about  Himself  caused  many  of  His  then 
numerous  disciples  to  withdraw  from  Him  and  give 
Him  up.  "Jesus  said  therefore  unto  the  twelve,  Will 
ye  also  go  away?  Simon  Peter  answered  Him,  Lord,  to 
whom  shall  we  go?  Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal 
life." 

"Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life!"  I  will  pass 
at  once  to  the  fuller  and  fullest  import  which  these 
words  were  not  long  in  acquiring.  In  fact,  even  at 
the  time,  St.  Peter  goes  on  to  base  his  valuation  of  our 
Lord's  words  upon  faith  in  His  person:  "We  have  be- 
lieved and  know  that  Thou  art  the  Holy  One  of  God." 
It  is  not  alone  that  our  Lord  spake  words  of  eternal 
life  —  He  was  the  Word  of  eternal  life.  That  Jesus 
Christ  is  personally  identified  with  the  Logos  or  Word 
of  God  is  a  truth  wider  and  higher  than  I  am  at  present 
concerned  with.  That  as  man,  and  simply  in  His 
humanity,  He  was  God's  "word  of  life,"  as  St.  John 


What  Else  but  Christ?  231 

designates  Him,  is  that  part  of  the  greater  truth  to 
which  I  would  limit  our  immediate  attention. 

God's  words,  we  have  been  told,  are  not  "  grammati- 
cal vocables,"  they  are  things  and  persons.  That  our 
Lord  was  "  the  word  of  life "  means  at  the  very  least, 
that  He  was  the  divine  expression  to  us  of  what  hie  is, 
the  way  of  it,  the  truth  of  it,  and  the  fact  or  actuality 
of  it.  That  the  life  thus  manifested  was  essentially 
"  our  "  life,  there  can  be  no  question.  It  was  manifested 
that  we  might  know  and  share  it;  the  whole  issue  pre- 
sented to  us  is  that  of  making  it  our  own,  which  we 
could  not  if  it  were  not  ours  in  kind.  It  is  the  primary 
truth  of  Christianity  that  Jesus  Christ  came  into  the 
world  to  be  its  life,  to  be  our  life  —  which  He  could 
not  be,  if  He  were  not  that  which  God  predestinated 
us,  and  our  nature  constitutes  us,  to  be;  short  of  which, 
consequently,  or  other  than  which,  we  are,  at  the  very 
least,  not  yet  ourselves.  The  life  of  Christ  would  not 
be  our  life,  if  it  were  not,  in  very  truth,  that  in  Himself : 
if  He  were  only  a  painted  picture  and  not  the  full 
reality  of  ourselves.  The  evolutionally  completed 
truth  of  ourselves  which  we  recognize  hi  Jesus  Christ 
may  be  described  in  three  stages: 

First  was  the  stage  of  mere  nature,  which  man  out- 
grows and  transcends  in  the  very  fact  or  act  of  becoming 
man.  Whatever  he  was  before,  from  the  moment  of 
becoming  finite  spirit  or  person  he  is  no  longer  mere 
product  or  creature  of  nature.  His  life  becomes  his 
own  or  subject  to  himself  so  soon  as  the  "  self"  is  there 
to  take  charge  of  it  and  become  accountable  for  it. 


232  The  Reason  of  Life 

The  second  stage  is  that  of  freedom  and  of  law:  life 
is  no  longer  the  act  of  nature  in  the  man,  but  the  act 
of  man  in  his  nature.  His  nature  and  himself  becomes 
a  law  to  him,  which  it  is  his  part  hi  life  to  realize  and 
fulfil.  All  law,  social,  civil,  or  religious,  is  but  the  vari- 
ous expression  of  that  one  law.  If  that  were  all,  what 
we  call  ethics  or  morals  would  be  the  sole  and  sufficient 
science  or  art  of  human  life.  If  the  one  real  require- 
ment of  life  were  that  we  should  fulfil  our  nature  or 
law  and  be  ourselves,  then  we  should  be  able  by  obeying 
our  law  to  become  ourselves.  But  human  nature,  by 
an  experience  sufficient  for  all  who  undertake  to  live 
and  not  merely  to  speculate  about  life,  knows  that  it 
can  neither  deny  its  law  nor  fulfil  it,  and  that  if  that  is 
all  that  there  is  for  life,  nothing  awaits  it  at  the  last 
but  failure  and  confusion.  Man  can  never  be  released 
from  his  law,  nor  be  satisfied  with  his  own  obedience 
to  it:  which  simply  means  that  he  will  never  be  himself, 
in  or  of  himself  alone. 

Nor  was  it  ever  his  nature  or  his  destiny  to  be  himself 
in  or  of  himself  and  apart  from  the  source  and  ground 
and  end  of  his  being.  He  has  indeed  no  nature  which 
he  may  not  ultimately  fulfil,  nor  law  which  he  may  not 
obey,  nor  self  which  he  may  not  realize,  but  the  part 
cannot,  in  any  sphere  or  plane  of  its  possible  being,  be 
independent  of  the  whole,  nor  the  stream  of  its  source. 
If  physically  or  metaphysically  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being  in  God,  it  cannot  be  that  rationally 
and  morally,  and  still  less  spiritually  or  in  the  highest 
reaches  and  functions  of  ourselves,  we  can  live  and  move 


What  Else  but  Christ?  233 

and  have  our  being  without  God,  apart  from  our  per- 
sonal knowledge  of  Him  and  of  His  personal  interest 
and  influence  in  us. 

God  shows  us  in  Jesus  Christ  that  man  not  only 
may  be  divine,  but  is  destined  by  his  nature,  and  by  his 
own  act  in  his  nature,  to  be  divine.  But  it  is  neither 
in  his  mere  nature,  nor  by  his  mere  act  in  his  nature — 
what  the  Scriptures  call  by  his  works  or  by  the  law  — 
that  he  is  or  becomes  divine,  but  only  by  the  perfect 
identification  of  God  with  himself  and  of  himself 
with  God.  He  must  be  wholly  of  God  in  order  to  be 
wholly  himself  —  his  holiness,  his  righteousness,  his 
life  all  God's  and  not  his  own,  but  all  his  own  now 
because  God's  in  him. 

Jesus  Christ  stands  to  us  for  a  distinct  definite  third 
stage  in  human  evolution,  which  no  denial  will  elimi- 
nate, and  the  essential  principles  and  characteristics 
of  which  we  cannot  overestimate.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
call  it  a  "  new  creation,"  a  "  regeneration,"  or  a  "  resur- 
rection": it  is  in  fact  all  three,  and  it  is  just  our  failure 
to  recognize  and  realize  all  this  in  Jesus  Christ  that  is 
now  the  so-called  decadence  of  Christianity.  The 
claim  of  such  a  third  stage  in  life  does  not  imply  the 
existence  of  what  has  been  called,  or  treated  as,  a  dead 
line  of  separation  between  stage  and  stage.  There  is  not 
the  difference  and  distance  between  Adam  and  Jesus, 
the  natural  and  the  spiritual,  the  unregenerate  and  the 
regenerate  man,  that  there  is  between  inorganic  and  or- 
ganic, or  between  animal  and  man.  Man  is,  potentially 
at  least  and  constitutionally,  ab  initio  all  three,  natural, 


234  The  Reason  of  Life 

moral,  and  spiritual;  and  he  is  actually  and  completely 
all  three  in  the  ideal  end  of  his  evolution.  But  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say,  that  the  essential  characteristic 
of  the  third  stage  is  not  the  immanent  physical  fact 
that  in  God  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,  but 
the  transcendent  spiritual  fact  that,  consciously,  freely, 
personally,  we  are  living,  moving,  having  and  exercising 
our  being  in  God.  This,  if  it  means  anything,  means 
that  God  is,  at  the  least,  as  personally  in  us  as  we  are 
in  Him  for  life,  that  our  life  is  as  truly  His  as  His  is 
ours.  And  this  being  so,  it  is  not  too  much  to  claim 
that  the  life  which  God  lives  thus  personally  in  a  man, 
and  the  man  lives  thus  personally  in  God,  is  sufficiently 
different  from  and  superior  to  the  life  the  man  can  live 
in  and  of  himself  to  be  called  a  regeneration,  a  new 
creation,  a  resurrection.  We  should  not  say  that 
either  the  Word  or  the  Spirit,  which  too  are  God,  and 
through  which  God  reveals  and  imparts  Himself  to  the 
world,  was  not  in  the  world  prior  to  their  incarnation 
in  Jesus  Christ.  Nor  would  we  say  that  God,  by  His 
Word  and  Spirit,  is  not  in  any  and  every  man  prior  to 
what  we  call  his  conversion,  and  is  not  even  accomplish- 
ing, in  many,  many  of  the  fruits  of  a  real  conversion;  — 
but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  God  is  in  us  for  conversion, 
to  impart  to  us  a  life  that  is  not  our  own,  to  make  of 
us  a  new  creation,  to  raise  us  up  out  of  inevitable 
death  in  ourselves  into  an  assurance  of  completed  life  in 
Himself.  Conversion  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  such 
an  attitude  toward  God  as  is  compatible  with  His  ac- 
complishing Himself  in  us  and  imparting  His  life  to  us. 


What  Else  but  Christ?  235 

The  essential  point  in  Christianity  may,  and  must, 
be  regarded  from  opposite  points  of  view,  if  we  would 
truly  comprehend  it.  Looking  at  it  from  the  divine 
side,  we  say  that  God  has  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ 
accomplished  in  us  and  for  us  all  that  properly  con- 
stitutes our  salvation;  that  is  to  say,  all  our  redemption 
from  sin  and  death,  and  all  our  attainment  of  holiness 
and  life;  that  is  to  say  again,  all  fulfilment  of  our 
nature,  all  realization  of  our  law,  all  acquisition  and 
achievement  of  ourselves  —  in  a  word,  all  holiness  and 
righteousness  and  eternal  life.  Faith  sees,  hope  fore- 
tastes, love  possesses  and  enjoys  all  this  completed 
fulness  of  divine  grace  in  Him  in  whom,  as  not  only 
First-begotten  of  God,  but  also  first-born  of  men,  God 
foresaw  and  foresees  us  all.  When  we  look  from  this 
side  upon  human  salvation  in  Jesus  Christ,  we  properly 
see  nothing  but  God  hi  Him  or  it  —  God  Manifest,  in 
the  flesh  indeed,  but  so  Himself  manifest,  that  the  flesh 
is  only  the  all  but  invisible  veil  through  which  we  see 
Him. 

But  now  I  contend  that  all  that  would  be  incompre- 
hensible and  meaningless,  if  we  did  not  add  the  other 
side  to  it,  and  that  with  exactly  equal  fulness  and 
unqualifiedness.  Looking  at  human  salvation  from 
the  human  side,  we  say  that  humanity  in  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ  has  —  not  by  any  mere  fact  of  His  human 
nature,  differencing  it  from  ours;  nor  yet  through  any 
mere  fact  of  His  human  self,  differencing  Him  from  us; 
but  in  our  actual  nature,  and  wholly  as  one  of  us  — 
accomplished  for  itself,  and  for  us  all  in  it,  all  that 


236  The  Reason  of  Life 

constitutes  our  salvation  or  is  expressed  by  it.  It  is  not 
truer  that  salvation  is  all  the  work  of  God  in  us  in  Jesus 
Christ,  than  it  is  that  it  is  all  the  work  of  man  in  God, 
in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  We  have  as  surely  to 
work  out  our  own  salvation  as  God  works  in  us  to  will 
and  to  do  the  things  that  make  for  and  constitute  our 
salvation. 

All  that  is  true  of  us  in  the  matter  is  equally  true  — 
only  in  highest  degree — in  Jesus  Christ;  His  salvation 
can  be  ours,  only  as  ours  was  His.  How  our  salvation 
was  also  —  and  first,  in  its  perfection  and  completeness 
—  that  of  Jesus  Christ,  may  more  easily  be  illustrated 
than  explained.  For  our  present  purpose  we  may  take 
the  position  assumed  and  habitually  maintained  by 
St.  Paul  —  namely,  that  salvation  is  synonymous  or 
identical  with  righteousness.  To  be  spiritually,  mor- 
ally, and  physically  or  metaphysically,  all  that  we  ought 
to  be,  would  be  at  once,  as  an  act,  righteousness,  and, 
as  a  fact  or  condition,  salvation.  There  is  nothing 
truer  to  ultimate  experience  than  the  principle  that  all 
truly  human,  and  not  merely  animal,  pleasure,  all 
happiness  or  blessedness,  is  an  act,  and  not  merely  an 
affection.  It  is  in  what  we  are  or  do,  in  fulfilment  of 
ourselves,  and  in  nothing  that  only  comes  to  us  without 
entering  into  our  own  being  and  doing.  Aristotle 
defines  happiness  as  an  energy,  by  which  he  means 
self-realization,  the  actualizing  of  all  that  is  potential 
in  us.  We  make  all  real  happiness  or  blessedness  that 
we  can  have,  and  God  Himself  can  be  or  do  no  more 
in  us,  personally,  than  we  ourselves  are  and  do  in  Him. 


What  Else  but  Christ?  237 

It  is  all  He,  but  it  must  be  all  we  also;  what  He  is  in 
us  is  measured  and  limited  by  what  we  are  in  Him. 

We  speak  of  Jesus  Christ  the  Righteous,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  St.  John.  And  in  Him  we  recognize,  with 
St.  Paul,  "  a  righteousness  of  God  "  —  that  is  to  say,  a 
human  righteousness  which  is,  nevertheless,  of  God, 
which  indeed  is  God  in  us,  God  our  righteousness. 
For  all  that,  it  was,  in  the  very  truest  sense,  in  the  only 
possible  true  sense,  distinctively  and  essentially  a 
human  righteousness,  a  righteousness  wrought  by  man 
—  only,  where  alone  it  can  be,  in  God.  The  righteous- 
ness of  Jesus  Christ,  if  it  was  ours  as  well  as  God's,  was 
wrought  by  us  as  well  as  by  God  in  Him;  under  the 
human  conditions  and  by  the  human  methods  and 
powers  of  us  all  in  Him  as  well  as  by  the  presence  and 
power  of  God  in  Him.  As  to  the  fact  that  the  human 
righteousness  of  Christ  was  actually  wrought  under 
all  the  essential  conditions,  and  subject  to  all  the  laws 
and  processes  of  a  truly  human  righteousness,  we 
must,  I  repeat,  have  recourse  to  illustration  rather 
than  to  explication  or  analysis. 

Attention  has  been  called  to  the  fact  that,  much  as 
our  Lord  insists  upon  faith  in  all  others,  large  part, 
if  not  the  whole,  as  He  makes  it  in  all  our  personal 
relation  to  God,  He  never  speaks  of  it  as  describing 
or  expressing  His  own  personal  relation  to  God.  This 
is  all  very  true,  and  requires  not  only  consideration 
but  explanation  at  our  hands.  I  attach  all  the  impor- 
tance to  it  that  it  demands.  But  I  do  not  account  for 
it  or  value  it  on  the  grounds  it  has  been  used  to  estab- 


238  The  Reason  of  Life 

lish.  The  inference  drawn  from  the  above  fact  when 
carried  out  to  its  full  conclusion  comes  to  nothing  less 
than  this:  That  our  Lord  in  His  human  life  was  inde- 
pendent of  faith  for  His  knowledge  of  and  His  general 
status  and  relation  with  God.  It  is  only  part  of  the 
larger  assumption  that  His  entire  consciousness  was 
of  that  immediate  and  direct  kind  which  belongs  to 
God  alone,  and  not,  like  ours,  mediate  and  derived. 
On  the  contrary,  if  our  Lord  was  not  subject  to  our 
own  human  law  of  faith,  we  cannot  but  realize  in  all 
the  consequences  His  utter  unlikeness  to  us  in  every 
respect  in  which  His  life  has  significance  and  value  for 
us.  He  is  not  one  of  us;  His  experiences,  temptations, 
victory,  His  death  and  resurrection  are  none  of  ours; 
His  holiness,  righteousness,  divine  life  are  His  alone, 
between  which  and  anything  we  can  be  there  is  no 
possible  likeness  or  connection. 

How  was  our  Lord  tempted  in  all  points  like  as  we  are? 
What  was  the  essence  of  that  temptation  which  was 
the  distinguishing  trait  of  His  earthly  condition,  and 
victory  over  which  was  the  crucial  and  crowning  point 
of  all  His  earthly  achievement  and  attainment?  All 
His  trial  was  the  trial  of  faith  and  all  His  victory  the 
victory  of  faith.  It  was  the  distinctive  probation  of 
man,  the  test  and  proof  of  the  distinctive  principle  of 
human  salvation  and  eternal  life.  "In  the  world  ye 
shall  have  tribulation,  but  be  of  good  cheer,  I  have 
overcome  the  world."  And  "What,"  asks  the  Apostle, 
"is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world,  but  our 
faith?"  There  is  no  conquest  of  or  victory  over  the 


What  Else  but  Christ?  239 

world  other  than  human  faith.  It  is  absurd  to  talk 
of  God's  victory  over  the  world;  the  very  terms  are 
applicable  to  man  alone,  and  their  applicability  to 
him  is  of  the  very  essence  of  his  nature,  his  condition, 
and  his  business  in  the  world. 

And  when  we  come  to  analyze  our  Lord's  actual 
temptations,  it  is  not  less  plain  that  they  are  all  directed 
against  faith,  and  that  His  victories  over  them  are  all 
victories  of  faith.  The  contradictories  of  faith  are 
doubt,  presumption,  and  self-seeking:  to  question  God, 
to  presume  upon  or  tempt  God,  to  seek  ourselves  under 
the  guise  of  serving  God,  these  are  the  three  subtle 
dangers  in  surmounting  which  we  overcome  the  world. 
The  acme  of  human  faith  is  when,  in  some  supreme 
moment  of  new,  or  renewed,  birth  from  above,  literally 
or  metaphorically  (but  none  the  less  really)  the  heavens 
are  opened  above  us,  the  Spirit  descends  in  sensible 
form,  and  we  hear  the  voice  of  God, "  This  is  my  beloved 
Son."  The  extreme  of  temptation  is  when,  in  some 
wilderness  of  bewilderment,  fear,  and  doubt,  our  own 
weakness,  the  impossibilities  of  our  task,  the  supremacy 
of  the  powers  of  darkness  rise  up  before  us,  God  seems 
infinitely  far  off,  and  the  temptation  comes  home  to 
us,  "  If  thou  art  the  son  of  God,  command  these  stones 
that  they  be  made  bread." 

Or,  when  we  have,  by  the  grace  of  God  manifested 
in  our  faith,  mightily  overcome  that  first  and  deadliest 
temptation  —  the  temptation  to  let  go  our  hold  upon 
God  and  lose  our  sense  of  victorious  sonship;  then, 
upon  some  giddy  pinnacle  of  perhaps  exalted  reaction 


240  The  Reason  of  Life 

from  all  doubt  or  distrust  of  God,  the  opposite  tempta- 
tion assails  us :  we  expect  of  God  that  He  will  sustain 
us  by  miracle,  that  He  will  save  us  without  our- 
selves, or  through  us  save  others  without  the  use  or 
necessity  on  our  part  of  common  sense  or  natural 
means. 

Or  again,  with  all  faith,  and  with  all  zeal  and  practical 
wisdom,  there  is  the  temptation  to  conduct  the  kingdom 
of  God  upon  principles  and  lines  of  worldly  success  and 
enterprise,  of  selfishness  and  pride,  of  earthly  advantage 
and  human  ambition.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  serv- 
ing God  with  observation,  success,  and  applause  with- 
out, that,  within,  is  a  falling  down  to  and  worshipping 
Satan. 

The  humanness  of  our  Lord's  temptations  and  vic- 
tories is  all  their  meaning  and  virtue  to  us.  His  earthly 
life  is  the  triumph  of  human  sonship  to  God.  In  the 
invincible  faith  and  inextinguishable  hope  of  that  divine 
relationship  we  have  the  sole  and  essential  principle  of 
eternal  life:  where  these  are,  God  is,  and  the  life  in  which 
He  is  is  indestructible.  That  is  the  human  explana- 
tion of  the  fact  with  regard  to  our  Lord,  that  "  He  could 
not  be  holden  to  death."  What  constitutes  Jesus 
Christ  our  High  Priest,  our  consummated  Representa- 
tive in  matters  relating  to  God,  that  is,  in  the  matter 
of  our  relation  to  God,  is  that  He  is  a  "Son  perfected 
for  evermore"  —  perfected  too  "through  sufferings," 
by  the  painful  but  necessary  discipline  of  temptation. 
Such  a  sonship,  so  achieved,  is  essentially  a  human  one, 
is  in  all  points  ours,  save  that  it  is  "perfected" — that 


What  Else  but  Christ?  241 

is,  it  is  ours  as  yet  only  in  faith  and  hope,  not  yet  in 
attainment  or  possession. 

The  perfection  of  sonship  to  God  is  not  only  in 
and  through  conquest  of  all  question  or  doubt  of  our 
relationship  and  oneness  with  God  through  His  all- 
prevailing  oneness  with  us;  it  requires  on  our  part  an 
actual  and  practical  human  obedience  in  all  natural 
and  moral  respects:  we  owe  to  Him  all  the  natural 
virtues  as  well  as  all  the  spiritual  graces,  all  fulfilment 
of  nature  and  realization  of  ourselves  as  well  as  serv- 
ice of  Him.  In  fact  the  natural  and  the  spiritual 
in  us,  the  human  and  the  divine,  are  not  separate 
compartments,  distinct  elements  in  our  being;  each  is 
perfected  and  complete  only  in  and  through  the 
others,  and  all  are  one  in  an  organic  whole.  What 
we  supremely  recognize  in  Jesus  Christ  is  not  alone 
the  perfect  spiritual,  but,  realized  in  it  also,  the  per- 
fect natural  and  the  perfect  ethical  or  moral.  If  in 
any  way  the  supernatural  in  us  supersedes  or  impairs 
the  natural  and  the  moral,  it  is  to  the  detriment  of 
the  wholeness  and  completeness  of  a  process  and  a 
product  which  are  all  divine.  Our  human  Lord  is 
human  through  and  through,  none  the  less  divine  for 
being  human,  nor  less  divine  in  any  part  than  in  all. 

The  crowning  trait  of  our  Lord's  human  fidelity  to 
God,  or  to  His  filial  relation,  was  manifested  in  His 
utter  refusal  to  entertain  the  slightest  suggestion  to 
mingle  high  motives  or  principles  of  personal  or  social 
conduct  with  concessions  to  human  expediency  or 
policy.  The  third  temptation  in  the  wilderness  was 
17 


242  The  Reason  of  Life 

no  doubt  the  suggestion  to  link  the  great  cause  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  with  expedients  or  policies  which 
would  have  given  it  earthly  success  and  world-wide 
dominion.  Absolute  truth,  eternal  right,  perfect  love 
and  goodness  were  His  sole  principle  and  policy,  alike 
for  Himself,  for  others,  and  for  God.  Any  worship  of 
earthly  success,  efficiency,  power,  or  glory,  at  the  ex- 
pense of  truth,  or  justice,  or  love,  was  a  bending  the 
knee  to  that  which  is  not  God;  any  suggestion  to  avoid 
one  consequence,  to  decline  one  drop  of  the  cup  of 
failure  or  pain  or  shame  that  might  come  in  the  train 
of  simple  obedience  to  the  perfect  law,  was,  though 
from  the  mouth  of  his  nearest  and  best,  to  be  met  only 
with  the  "Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan!"  There  is  no 
question  that  Jesus  Christ  meant  to  build  His  kingdom 
upon  the  one,  practicable  as  well  as  ideal,  principle  of 
perfect  love,  ensuring  perfect  justice,  and  realizing 
perfect  truth  —  that  is,  the  universal  reign  of  God  upon 
earth.  I  say  the  perfectly  practicable  principle  of  love, 
for  though  it  may  not  be  practicable  in  the  sense  of 
our  being  able  to  establish  it  yet  it  is,  in  the  sense 
that,  if  it  were  established,  it  would,  even  on  this 
earth,  work  to  perfection  for  each,  for  all,  and  for 
God.  Perfect  love  would  carry  with  it  the  natural 
and  complete  fulfilment  of  all  law. 

It  is  upon  this  general  line  that  I  would  express  our 
concurrence  with  those  original  disciples  of  Jesus  who 
to  His  enquiry,  "Will  ye  also  go  away?"  could  only 
reply,  "Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go?"  Where  else 
shall  we  find  the  Life,  which  is  ours,  and  apart  from 


What  Else  but  Christ?  243 

which  we  are  not  ourselves?  There  is  none  other 
name  under  heaven,  given  among  men,  wherein  and 
whereby  we  may  receive  health  and  salvation. 

If,  then,  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ  is  the  life  of  a  perfect 
human  faith,  how  is  it  that,  in  prescribing  faith  as  the 
condition  of  life  to  all  others,  He  never  ascribes  it  to 
Himself  as  the  source  of  His  own  life?  The  answer  to 
that  question  we  must  reserve  to  another  chapter. 


XIX 

THE  DEITY  AND  DIVINITY  OF  CHRIST 

THE  question  upon  which  we  have  come  may  be 
answered  under  a  discussion  of  the  two  sides  of  a 
current  controversy.  The  question  is  between  the 
mere,  relative  divinity  of  Jesus  and  His  essential  or 
absolute  deity.  By  the  former  we  understand  that 
what  is  revealed  to  us  in  Jesus  Christ  is  the  innate 
natural  divinity  of  humanity,  that  divinity  actualized 
in  His  person  to  the  highest  degree,  through  His  own 
unique  human  consciousness  and  realization  of  it. 
Because  He  of  all  men  most  perfectly  apprehended 
the  fatherhood  of  God,  and  so  most  perfectly  fulfilled 
and  manifested  the  common  human  sonship  of  us  all 
to  God,  therefore  in  Him  supremely  God  is  revealed 
in  His  relation  to  us  as  Father,  and  we  are  revealed  to 
ourselves  in  our  relation  to  God  as  His  children.  This 
does  not  necessitate  any  conception  of  the  person  of 
our  Lord  as  different  from  ours  in  kind,  but  only  in 
degree.  He  is  the  divine  man,  man  as  he  is  from 
heaven  and  God,  and  not  merely  as  he  is  from  earth  or 
nature.  As  such  He  is  only  what  we  all  ought  to  be 
in  fulfilment  of  our  natural  derivation  from  God  and 
destination  to  God. 

As  contradistinguished  from  that  view  of  the  essen- 
244 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ         245 

tially  human  divinity  of  Jesus,  it  is  not  necessary  yet 
to  restate  the  traditional  Christian  doctrine  of  His  dis- 
tinctive deity.  That  will  appear  in  the  end;  in  the 
mean  time  I  wish  to  emphasize  the  fact  that,  in  such 
controversies,  the  truth  is  never  to  be  found  in  one  side 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  other.  In  this  particular  case, 
the  whole  positive  contention  of  those  who  affirm  the 
essentially  human  divinity  of  Jesus  is  impregnable;  it 
is  only  their  negation  of  the  concurrent  truth  of  His 
actual  deity  also  that  we  have  to  take  issue  with.  I 
myself  have  no  hesitation  in  denying  any  presence  or 
operation  of  real  deity  in  Jesus  Christ  as  manifested 
otherwise  than  in  the  fact  of  His  accomplished  and 
perfected  human  divinity.  There  is  no  realized  actual- 
ity of  man  in  God  that  is  not  equally  the  fulfilled 
actuality  and  living  presence  of  God  in  man.  God  was 
in  Christ  for  human  redemption  and  completion,  that 
His  divine  fatherhood  should  fulfil  and  satisfy  itself 
in  our  human  sonship,  that  His  eternal  purpose  and 
our  natural  destiny  should  be  accomplished  in  the  one 
divine-human  act  in  which  He  "becomes"  our  Father 
and  we  His  children.  Outside  of  the  effectual  accom- 
plishment of  this  end,  I  see  no  proof  of  or  reason  for 
any  exploitation  of  deity  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  not  one  evidence  or  ex- 
pression of  deity  in  Jesus  that  is  not  resolvable  into 
the  direct  and  necessary  action  of  God  in  the  redemp- 
tion and  completion  of  humanity,  manifested  in  the 
self-redeeming  and  completing  activity  of  humanity 
in  God.  The  resurrection  itself  was  the  perfect  grace 


246  The  Reason  of  Life 

of  God  acting  through  the  perfected  faith,  love,  and 
obedience  of  man.  It  was  "  our  "  death  to  sin  and  life 
to  God,  "  our  "  redemption  from  sin  and  death  through 
our  resurrection  to  holiness  and  life. 

Our  Lord  began  His  ministry  at  the  age  of  thirty. 
God  could  already  say  of  Him,  "This  is  my  beloved 
Son,  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased."  That  was  no 
recognition  and  approval  of  a  divine,  but  manifestly 
of  a  human  sonship:  only  what  our  Lord  was  in  His 
humanity  was  subject  or  matter  of  divine  commenda- 
tion. His  perfect  sonship  was  that  of  a  perfect  faith 
in  and  relation  to  God;  and  yet  that  very  faith  in  His 
own  sonship  was,  from  the  constitution  of  human 
nature  and  the  conditions  of  human  life,  almost  im- 
mediately and  all  through  His  stay  upon  earth,  the 
subject  of  fierce  temptation  and  bitter  trial.  It  was 
through  this  very  fact  that  our  Lord's  life  upon  earth 
was  one  also  of  the  constant,  unbroken  though  not 
untried,  victory  of  faith;  so  that  He  could  say  at  the 
last,  "I  have  overcome  the  world."  It  was  given  to 
Him  in  the  moment  of  the  concentrated  power  of  dark- 
ness against  Himself  to  "see  Satan  as  lightning  fall 
from  heaven";  and  to  hear  the  word  of  God,  "Sit 
Thou  on  my  right  hand,  until  I  make  thine  enemies 
thy  footstool." 

The  "  authority  "  with  which  Jesus  spoke  and  acted, 
as  apparent  to  us  in  the  record  as  it  was  evident  to 
those  who  saw  and  heard  Him,  and  causing  them  to 
say,  more  truly  than  they  knew,  "  Never  man  spake  as 
this  man,"  was  indeed  the  authority,  not  only  of  perfect 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ         247 

truth,  but  of  perfect  knowledge  of  the  truth.  But  it 
was  not  in  Him,  at  the  time  and  under  the  conditions 
of  His  humanity,  the  direct  and  underived  knowledge 
of  Deity:  it  was  not  God  speaking  as  God.  In  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  for  example,  our  Lord  speaks 
with  the  authority  of  the  truth  itself.  But  it  is  the 
truth  incarnate,  speaking  out  of  the  certainty  of  a 
perfect  human  experience  and  knowledge  of  it.  Not 
only  the  truth  but  God  Himself  —  for  they  are  the 
same  —  spoke  in  Him;  but  it  was  God  in  human 
intelligence  and  understanding.  It  all  came  up  in 
Jesus,  and  came  forth  from  Him,  as  what  He  Himself 
had  tried,  and  proved,  and  knew:  "I  speak  that  I  do 
know,  and  testify  that  I  have  seen."  It  is  not  that 
Jesus  did  not  truly,  and  even  divinely,  know  all  He 
taught;  but  it  was  the  knowledge  of  one  who,  as  He 
Himself  expresses  it,  had  "seen"  and  "heard"  and 
"  received  "  all  that  He  had  to  communicate  or  impart. 
He  never  spoke  or  acted  or  judged  "of  Himself"  but 
only  as  God  did  so  through  Him.  In  a  word,  the 
truth,  and  the  beauty,  and  the  good  to  us  of  all  that 
Jesus  was  or  said  or  did,  lay  in  the  fact  that  in  Him 
we  have  a  perfect  experience  and  knowledge  of  "our 
own,"  of  God  in  human  life  and  of  human  life  in  God. 
I  would  say  therefore  of  the  knowledge  of  God  and 
of  Life,  manifested  by  our  Lord  in  His  earthly  atti- 
tude and  activity,  not  that  it  was  the  knowledge  of  one 
who  was  independent  of  the  faith  by  which  alone  we 
know  God,  nor  of  the  hope  in  which  alone,  for  the  most 
part,  we  really  possess  Him  —  but  rather,  that  it  was 


248  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  knowledge  of  one  in  whom  faith  is  so  perfected 
into  sight,  and  hope  is  so  completed  in  possession,  that 
he  has  transcended  the  means  and  attained  the  end, 
and  no  longer  remembers  the  way  in  the  perfectness  of 
the  arrival.  But  our  Lord  never  forgets  that  His  way 
is  ours  also,  and  that  where  He  is  we  too  must  come, 
and  see  as  He  sees  and  know  as  He  knows. 

Thus  in  the  Beatitudes  with  which  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  opens,  the  force  and  application  are  largely 
lost,  unless  we  see  in  them  the  principles  and  basis  for 
a  philosophy  of  the  highest  life  drawn  from  the  experi- 
ence of  one  who  had  sounded  all  the  depths  and  attained 
all  the  heights,  and  who  knew  at  first  hand  all  the 
secret  of  human  blessedness.  "Take  my  yoke  upon 
you,  and  learn  of  me;  for  I  am  meek  and  lowly  in 
heart:  and  ye  shall  find  rest  unto  your  souls."  .The 
humility  and  love  which  He  taught  He  had  Himself 
learned,  the  rest  He  promised  He  had  Himself  enjoyed: 
"Learn  of  Me"  —  from  what  you  see  in  me,  and  not 
merely  from  what  you  hear. 

From  all  this  it  is  apparent  that  what  I  see  primarily 
in  Jesus  Christ  is  the  divinity  of  our  humanity,  a  divin- 
ity potential  only  in  the  beginning,  and  consisting  in 
a  natural  relation  and  in  a  capacity  for  personal  union, 
but  in  the  end,  as  in  Him,  perfected  into  a  personal 
oneness  with  God;  in  Whom,  and  of  ourselves,  we  now 
indeed  do  consciously,  freely,  and  literally  "live  and 
move  and  have  our  being":  now,  in  Him,  "we  know 
even  as  also  we  are  known,"  and  love  as  we  are  loved. 
This  "in  Christ"  is  not  only,  as  I  have  frequently  said, 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ         249 

our  supernatural  divine  predestination,  it  is  no  less 
our  natural  human  destination.  In  Jesus  Christ  alone 
we  come  to  all  ourselves. 

Full  admission,  then,  is  to  be  given  to  the  contention 
that,  La  the  Jesus,  not  only  of  history,  but  of  spiritual 
apprehension  and  experience,  the  divinity  revealed  to 
us  is  one  which  we  are  called  fully  to  share  with  Him. 
It  is  the  divinity  of  our  natural  generation  or  sonship 
from  God,  realized  and  actualized  by  our  regeneration 
or  spiritual  new  birth  from  God  in  Jesus  Christ;  that 
is  to  say,  by  the  operation  upon  us  and  in  us  of  the 
divine  Word  and  Spirit  manifest  and  actual  in  the 
person  and  work  of  our  Lord.  We  see  in  Him  at  once 
the  agency  and  the  action,  the  energy  and  the  process 
of  our  own  salvation:  God's  Word  speaking  life  to  us, 
and  God's  Spirit  answering  life  in  us. 

The  point  to  which  we  come  now  is  this:  does  this 
full  recognition  and  appreciation  of  the  divine  hu- 
manity and  human  divinity  of  our  Lord  contradict  or 
preclude  the  traditional  and  catholic  doctrine  of  His 
personal  and  real  deity?  As  to  what  that  doctrine  is, 
I  hold  that  the  true  and  general  Christian  conscious- 
ness of  the  Church  is  identical  with  the  one  mind  and 
spirit  of  the  New  Testament.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say 
that  the  understanding  which  cannot  recognize  unity 
in  the  truth  of  the  New  Testament  and  in  the  faith  of 
the  Church  is,  to  say  the  least,  not  spiritual  enough  to 
discern  essential  identity  of  reality  underneath  the 
manifold  appearances  and  differences  of  individual  and 
transient  opinion  or  explanation.  In  expressing  the 


250  TJie  Reason  of  Life 

mind  of  the  New  Testament,  as  the  one  thing  that  does 
not  change,  I  assume  that  I  shall  be  representing  also 
the  essential  consciousness  and  experience  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

When  we  speak  of  seeing  God  in  the  face  or  hi  the 
person  of  Jesus  Christ,  we  must  keep  in  mind  always 
this  principle  of  faith  as  contradistinguished  from  ordi- 
nary or  natural  sight:  God  is,  to  the  latter,  necessarily 
and  universally  invisible.  "  No  one  hath  seen  God  at 
any  time";  He  is  visible,  therefore,  never  in  Himself, 
but  only  in  some  mean  or  medium  of  Himself.  He 
reveals  Himself  thus,  for  example,  in  creation;  which, 
however  it  may  manifest  Him  —  inasmuch  as  His  mind, 
His  will,  His  power,  expressed  in  it  are  certainly  Him- 
self —  is  nevertheless  not  itself  He.  Now  in  the  very 
highest  and  completest  sense  in  which  God  can  be 
visible,  apprehensible,  knowable  to  us,  we  say  that 
Jesus  Christ  is  "  God  manifest  in  the  flesh."  In  what 
else  actual  or  conceivable  —  sun,  moon,  or  star,  action 
of  matter,  or  law  of  things  —  can  God  be  so  visible, 
what  other  mean  or  medium  can  God  have  of  self- 
manifestation  to  us,  so  capable,  or  in  comparison 
capable  at  all,  of  revealing  and  expressing  Himself 
to  us,  as  the  mind  and  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ?  If  we 
are  to  find  God,  see  God,  know  God,  meet  and  deal 
with  God,  in  prayer  or  praise,  in  worship  or  service  — 
if  God  and  we  come  together  at  all  or  anywhere,  where 
shall  it  be  but  where,  in  the  person,  in  the  personal  act, 
in  the  death  and  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  God  and  we  are 
at  one,  and  are  one? 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ 

If  it  is  said  that  we  are  to  find  God  in  nature,  I  reply 
that  I  find  Him  truly  and  perfectly  there  only  in  Him 
in  whom  I  see  the  end  and  reason  and  meaning  of 
nature,  the  only  complete  explanation  and  justifica- 
tion of  nature.  If  I  am  told  that  we  are  to  find  God  in 
ourselves,  I  answer  that  I  do  not  find  or  know  myself 
except  in  Jesus  Christ,  in  whom  I  find  myself  in  finding 
God.  The  conclusion  of  the  matter  is,  that  if  Jesus 
Christ  is  not  God  to  me,  there  is  no  God  for  me  at  all. 
God  outside  of  Him  is  an  inference,  an  abstraction,  a 
form  or  necessity  of  thought.  God  in  Him  enters  into 
my  consciousness,  my  experience,  my  life,  myself.  He 
is  my  beginning,  the  divine  Idea  in  which  I  was  cre- 
ated, or  rather  which  created  me;  He  is  my  end,  the 
divine  predestination  or  fulfilment  for  which  I  was 
created. 

If  it  be  objected  that  we  cannot  identify  Jesus  hi 
this  way  at  once  with  nature  or  man  and  with  God,  I 
reply  that,  in  reality,  we  cannot  do  anything  else. 
Whatever  "outsideness  "  of  things  and  persons  there  is 
in  God,  is  not  there  for  us.  In  Himself  He  is  invisible 
and  inaccessible.  It  is  only  in  nature  and  ourselves 
that  He  touches  us;  it  is  only  in  Jesus  Christ,  the 
eternal  Word  of  God,  the  Life  of  nature,  the  Light  of 
men,  that  He  is  personally  with  us  and  in  us,  so  that 
we  know  as  also  we  are  known. 

There  is  no  question  that  our  crude  systems  of  ex- 
planation have  largely  obscured  and  even  perverted  the 
truth  of  the  Incarnation.  But  we  should  remember, 
in  the  first  place,  that  it  is  divine  truth  and  not  human 


252  The  Reason  of  Life 

explication  that  is  catholic  or  "of  faith";  and,  in  the 
second  place,  that  human  comprehension  and  elucida- 
tion has  always  to  pass  through  crudeness  and  is 
necessarily  liable  to  error  on  its  long  way  to  knowing 
"  even  as  also  we  are  known."  The  faith  of  Christendom 
has  on  the  whole  been  organic,  and  is  to  be  accepted 
and  defended  as  to  its  consistent  conclusions  of  fact; 
but  even  the  grounds  upon  which,  in  argument,  the 
truth  has  often  been  established  and  enforced,  are 
still  liable  to  be  called  in  question  and  to  be  proved 
invalid.  The  truth  does  not  ultimately  rest  upon  its 
proofs:  there  is  truth  that  persists  through  and  sur- 
vives the  most  manifold  inconclusiveness  and  irration- 
ality of  its  proofs.  The  Church  has  had  an  unfailing 
instinct  and  experience  of  the  Incarnation  underneath 
the  sometimes  absurdities  and  even  immoralities  of  its 
explanations  and  explications  of  it.  The  theory  of  the 
process  of  the  At-one-ment  of  God  and  man  in  Jesus 
Christ  —  objectively  for  us  in  Himself,  subjectively 
in  us,  in  ourselves  —  by  the  Word  of  God  to  us  in 
Him,  by  the  Spirit  of  God  in  us  through  Him  —  will 
doubtless  be  always  more  or  less  in  controversy,  while 
the  fact  will  remain  and  the  process  continue  the  same. 
We  have  not  then  to  demonstrate  the  consistency  in 
itself  of  our  holding  together  the  purely  human  divin- 
ity and  the  distinct  and  essential  deity  of  our  Lord; 
nor  have  we  to  elucidate  metaphysically  or  scientifi- 
cally the  process  by  -which  we  do  so.  There  are  many 
things  which  we  are  compelled  to  hold  together  with- 
out being  able  to  justify  their  consistence.  What  we 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ          253 

have  to  do  is  to  express  as  clearly  as  we  can  the  necessity 
we  are  under  to  hold  them  together;  in  doing  this,  we 
may  safely  conclude  that  the  best  way  is  to  follow  the 
mind  of  historic  Christianity  itself.  Christianity  has 
accepted  Jesus'  Christ  as  the  eternal  and  perfect  Logos 
or  Word  of  God:  it  has  found  and  seen  in  Him,  not 
only  the  highest  conceivable,  but  the  highest  inherently 
possible  Self-manifestation  and  communication  of  God 
to  man.  There  is  both,  nothing  more  of  Himself 
communicable  to  us,  and  no  mean  or  medium  through 
which  He  could  more  communicate  Himself  to  us, 
than  we  have  in  Jesus  Christ.  Christianity  has  been 
first  in  recognizing  the  spiritual  as  well  as  rational 
unity  of  the  universe.  According  to  it,  the  divine 
logos  —  by  which  is  meant  the  eternal  reason,  meaning, 
and  ground  —  of  all  creation,  natural  and  spiritual,  is 
one.  If  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Logos  of  man,  then  is  He 
the  Logos  of  all  creation  —  of,  what  we  should  now 
call,  all  evolution  —  of  which  man  is  final  cause  and 
crown.  And  if  He  is  Logos  of  these,  then  He  is  Logos 
of  God  Himself:  that  is  to  say,  the  full  account  of  man 
is  the  account  of  the  universe,  so  far  as  it  has  signifi- 
cance for  us;  and  the  truth  of  the  universe  and  of  man  as 
its  end  and  crown  expresses  all  the  account  God  can 
give  us  of  Himself:  outside  of  that  is  outside  of  our 
limit  of  being  or  of  experience. 

When  we  speak  of  the  reason  or  meaning  or  purpose 
of  a  thing,  the  human  reason,  meaning,  or  purpose  of 
it,  we  may  be  speaking  of  something  abstract  or  im- 
personal, or  at  least  of  something  no  longer  concrete 


254  The  Reason  of  Life 

and  personal.  But  the  reason  of  the  world,  the  reason 
of  man,  the  reason  of  any  divine  or  real  creation,  can 
be  no  past  or  absent  or  impersonal  reason.  Creation 
proper  exists  only  by  and  subsists  only  in  the  present, 
conscious  and  operative,  personal  Reason  and  Meaning 
and  Cause  of  it.  If  Jesus  Christ  is  the  divine  reason 
of  man,  then  is  He  the  divine  reason  of  all,  and  then 
He  is  personal  God  in  all  to  us. 

Would  it  be  possible  for  Jesus  Christ  to  be,  hi  any 
real  sense,  the  Divine  Man  to  us,  and  not  be  God  in 
that  Man  to  us?  Could  He  be  perfectly  man  hi  God, 
if  He  were  not  equally  and  primarily  God  hi  man? 
The  trouble  is  that  they  who  speak  most  of  the  natural 
divinity  of  man,  and  who  see  in  Jesus  only  the  highest 
expression  of  that  divinity,  for  the  most  part  use  the 
term  in  a  very  modified,  Aristotelian,  sense.  Aristotle, 
speaking  of  the  highest  human  Good,  or  Happiness, 
practically,  but  politely,  waives  aside  the  popular 
notion  that  there  is  anything  really  divine  in  it  by 
suggesting  its  divinity  in  another  sense:  "If  it  is  not 
actually  God  in  us,  at  any  rate  it  is  certainly  the  di- 
vinest  of  things."  The  natural  reason  of  man,  the 
undeniable  evidences  of  reason  in  the  universe,  be- 
speak an  eternal  and  universal  ground  of  being  which 
we  cannot  call  less  than  divine.  Whatsoever  is  in 
highest  conformity  with  that  ideal  is  worthy  of  the 
same  title. 

The  question  to  be  decided  is  this:  Is  Jesus  Christ 
the  highest  reach  of  man  God  ward,  or  is  He  the  perfect 
movement  or  action  of  God  manward?  My  answer 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ         255 

is  that  He  is  both;  that  He  could  not  be  one  without 
the  other;  but  that  He  is  primarily  and  essentially 
the  latter,  and  only  by  consequence  and  in  effect  the 
former.  We  can  draw  near  to  God  only  as  God  draws 
near  to  us  and  draws  us:  We  love  Him  because  He 
first  loved  us:  We  know  only  as  we  are  known: 

"  Every  inmost  aspiration  is  God's  Angel  undefiled, 
And  in  every   O,  my  Father!  slumbers  deep  a 
'  Here,  my  Child.'  " 

The  too  common  sense  of  divinity  as  applied  to  our 
Lord  does  not  practically  or  really  include  God  at  all. 
It  means  a  human  ideal,  a  quality  or  character  of  con- 
formity to  our  own  abstract  conception  or  speculative 
theory  of  God.  It  is  hostile  to  any  actual  or  personal 
part  of  God,  any  real  presence  and  operation  of  God,  in 
the  affairs  of  the  world.  I  sympathize  with  this  gen- 
eral side  of  thought  to  the  extent  that  I  admit  that 
God,  even  in  Jesus  Christ,  manifests  Himself,  is  present 
and  operative,  only  within  and  not  without,  inside  and 
not  outside  of  the  world  and  humanity.  It  would  not 
be  a  valid  Incarnation,  if  God  in  Jesus  Christ  were 
present  otherwise  than  in  and  as  all  that  man  is.  But 
then,  neither  would  man  be  all  that  he  is  —  but  is 
only  hi  Jesus  Christ  —  if  God  were  not  really  and  per- 
sonally in  Jesus  Christ,  at-one-ing  us  with  Himself 
by  first  at-one-ing  Himself  with  us. 

What  Christianity  wants  today  is,  not  an  inferential 
or  speculative,  not  an  abstract  and  ideal,  but  a  personal 
and  real  sense  of  God.  We  want,  not  a  conception 


256  The  Reason  of  Life 

merely,  but  an  experience  and  knowledge  of  the  uni- 
versal true  Real  Presence:  an  objective  real  presence 
of  God,  everywhere  indeed,  but  manifestly  and  su- 
premely in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ;  an  objective 
real  presence  of  Christ  still  in  the  world,  and  manifestly 
in  His  Church  and  Sacraments;  a  subjective  real 
presence  of  God  through  Christ  by  His  Spirit  in  us,  in 
the  faithful  use  and  exercise  of  the  divinely  instituted 
means  of  grace.  There  is  nothing  more  empty  and 
ineffectual  than  a  divinity  in  which  there  is  no  real  and 
effective  personal  presence  of  God  Himself.  If  God 
was  not  really  and  personally  in  Jesus  Christ,  and  if 
Jesus  Christ  is  not  really  and  personally  by  His  Spirit 
in  us,  our  Christianity  will  always  merit  to  be  a  mock- 
ery and  a  failure.  If  God  is  in  Christ,  and  Christ  in 
us,  our  faith  may  rest  secure. 

The  question  still  remains:  If  Christ's  divinity  is 
ours;  and  if,  to  be  actual  and  real,  it  involves  in  us  as 
in  Him  the  personal  presence  and  operation  of  God 
Himself,  then  where  and  how  shall  we  draw  the  dis- 
tinction in  kind  between  Him  and  us?  Or  why  draw 
the  distinction  at  all?  Will  not  the  claim  for  Him  be 
satisfied  in  the  realized  divinity  of  the  whole  humanity 
of  which  He  is  the  head?  But  in  what  sense  is  He 
Head  of  humanity?  And  why  and  how  is  humanity 
realized  in  and  through  Him?  The  conditions  of  our 
realization  or  salvation  are  as  follows:  First,  we  see 
salvation  —  which  can  mean  nothing  else  or  less  than 
redemption  and  completion  —  in  Him;  only  in  Him  do 
we  know  what  it  is,  how  it  is,  and  all  that  it  is.  The 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ          257 

thing  which  alone  is  salvation  for  us,  the  process  by 
which  alone  that  salvation  is  possible  for  us,  we  see 
accomplished  and  presented  as  the  supreme  end  and 
object  of  our  faith,  our  hope,  and  above  all  of  our  love, 
desire,  and  effort.  Christ's  holiness  of  spirit,  His  obedi- 
ence and  righteousness,  His  death  to  sin  and  life  to  God, 
are  all  human  facts  in  Him  because  they  are  necessities 
for  us:  they  are  the  conditions  and  the  constituents 
of  our  salvation:  only  in  them  as  acts  and  facts  in 
ourselves  are  we  actually  redeemed  or  completed. 
There  was  nothing  that  Jesus  did  that  we  are  not  to 
do  with  Him,  or  is  that  we  are  not  to  be  in  Him.  Only 
as  we  share  all  His  experiences  in  the  flesh,  His  temp- 
tations, conflicts,  death,  can  we  share  His  attainments 
and  realizations  in  the  spirit,  His  victorious  holiness, 
righteousness,  life. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  no  human  being  on  earth 
claims  here,  as  de  facto,  the  accomplished  work  and  the 
completed  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  They  are  ours  indeed, 
but  they  are  ours  in  faith  only  and  in  hope,  never  yet 
in  fact.  St.  Paul  distinctly  disclaims  having  attained, 
and  St.  John  tells  us  that,  if  we  say  we  have  no  sin,  we 
deceive  ourselves  and  the  truth  is  not  in  us.  In  the 
clear  light  of  the  perfected  salvation  revealed  to  him  in 
Jesus  Christ,  no  Christian  claims  to  be  saved  otherwise 
than  in  faith  and  in  hope.  But  faith  and  hope  are  both 
only  phases  and  stages  of  love.  No  man  merely  be- 
lieves in  or  hopes  for  that  which  he  already  sees  and 
possesses;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  no  man  truly  be- 
lieves in  or  hopes  for  that  which  he  does  not  sincerely 
18 


258  The  Reason  of  Life 

care  for  and  supremely  desire   to  possess;    that    is, 
which  he  does  not  truly  love. 

In  the  third  place,  the  gist  and  essence  of  Christian- 
ity consists,  not  alone  in  the  reality  and  perfection  of  a 
salvation  which  is  never,  in  fact  or  wholly,  ours  within 
our  present  experience;  but  not  less  in  the  certainty 
of  the  faith  and  hope  that,  nevertheless,  they  are  ours. 
We  are  saved  hi  Jesus  Christ  in  whom  salvation  is 
complete,  even  though  we  are  not  saved  in  ourselves  in 
whom  we  know  that  it  is  very  far  from  complete.  But 
how  could  faith  thus  become  to  us,  practically,  sight  or 
knowledge,  and  hope  actual  possession,  if  we  did  not 
see  in  Jesus  Christ  such  a  direct  Word  of  God  to  us  — 
such  a  word  of  truth,  of  promise,  and  of  power  and 
fulfilment,  as  is  sufficient  to  put  reality  into  our  faith 
and  certainty  into  our  hope?  Christianity  is  nothing 
less  than  this:  God  so  in  Jesus  Christ,  so  incarnate  in 
us  in  and  through  Jesus  Christ,  as  to  be  actually  and 
personally,  though  humanly  and  progressively,  our 
Holiness,  our  Righteousness,  and  our  Life.  All  this 
God  could  never  be  to  us  or  in  us  by  mere  requirement 
or  law,  but  only  through  the  mutual  relation  and 
action  of  perfect  love:  a  love  which,  on  our  part,  can 
begin  only  in  faith  and  hope,  and  be  perfected  only 
through  the  divine  assurance  of  faith  and  certainty 
of  hope. 

Jesus  Christ  is  thus  completely  man  —  none  so 
much  so  as  He  who  recapitulates  in  Himself  the  whole 
reason,  meaning,  and  process  of  humanity.  But  He 
who  is  thus  its  Logos,  its  divine  Idea  and  eternal 


Deity  and  Divinity  of  Christ         259 

Destination,  its  temporal  revelation  and  actual  com- 
pletion, cannot  be  merely  on  a  par  with  the  other  mem- 
bers of  humanity.  That  which  is  first  and  last  of  a 
series,  and  which  pervades  the  whole  as  its  ideal  prin- 
ciple and  causative  fulfilment,  is  more  than  only  one  of 
the  series.  Let  us  recall  an  illustration  from  Aristotle: 
We  may  call  Happiness  the  supreme  Good  and  End,  if, 
as  he  does,  we  mean  by  happiness  that  which  hi  fact  is, 
in  itself,  the  supreme  good.  Now  hi  that  sense  happi- 
ness is  certainly  good,  and  a  good;  but  it  is  not  one  of 
the  goods,  outside  of  and  in  addition  to  the  others.  It 
is  a  good  which  includes  all  the  others.  The  whole  is 
not  only  the  whole;  it  is  also  all  the  parts,  and  its 
perfection  involves  and  includes  the  perfection  of  all 
the  parts.  Jesus  Christ  was  man,  and  was  a  man. 
But  He  is  also  all  humanity,  and  if,  in  simple  faith  and 
hope  and  love,  which  will  carry  with  them  all  the 
desire  and  purpose  and  effort  of  which  we  are  progress- 
ively and  increasingly  capable,  we  will  put  ourselves 
and  be  hi  Him  as  He  is  in  us  —  if  we  will  truly  appre- 
hend that  for  which  we  are  apprehended  in  Christ 
Jesus;  then  we  shall  know  in  time,  though  we  may 
never  be  able  to  explain  in  terms,  the  truth  and  actual- 
ity of  an  Incarnation  which,  beginning  and  ending  in 
Jesus  Christ,  includes  and  completes  us  all. 


XX 

THEOLOGY  AND  ETHICS 

THE  following  chapter  is  based  upon  a  recent  work, 
"The  Ethics  of  St.  Paul,"  by  Archibald  B.  D.  Alex- 
ander, M.A.  (Glasgow).  With  that  work  as  a  whole, 
as  the  best  and  completest  exposition  I  know  of  the 
ethical  teaching  and  system  of  St.  Paul,  I  am  in  entire 
accord.  Now,  however,  I  desire  to  lay  even  additional 
emphasis  upon  a  particular  point,  which  the  author 
himself  makes  much  of. 

In  the  preface  a  saying  is  quoted  to  the  not  unfamiliar 
effect,  that  "for  many  thinkers  St.  Paul  is  as  obsolete 
as  Tertullian  or  Calvin."  What  of  fact  is  expressed 
in  these  words  is  to  be  deplored  rather  than  ignored; 
and  I  believe  that  a  true  accounting  for  the  fact  will  be 
the  most  effectual  step  toward  curing  or  correcting  it. 
Why  is  it  that  —  even  from  the  Christian  standpoint 

—  St.    Paul   is   largely   being   abandoned   for   Christ 
Himself?    The  cry  "Back  to  Christ"  means  for  many 

—  "Back  from  Paul  to  Christ,"  from  the  metaphysics 
of  the  Apostle  to  the  simplicity  of  the  Master.     Which 
again  means  the  modern  deposition  of  Paul  as  true 
"theological  expounder  and  successor  of  Jesus."     For 
all  this  I  believe  that  the  theology  or  doctrinal  system 
of  popular  Christianity  has  been  itself  primarily  to 

260 


Theology  and  Ethics  261 

blame,  and  that  St.  Paul  has  suffered  more  of  injustice 
and  misrepresentation  at  its  hands  than  any  of  us  have 
come  as  yet  to  realize. 

What  I  mean  is,  that  most  of  the  Paulinism  against 
which  modern  ethical  criticism  is  so  effectually  directed 
is  that  of  our  successive  and  traditional  doctrinal  sys- 
tems rather  than  that  of  the  New  Testament  or  of  St. 
Paul  himself.  As  in  general  I  offer  Alexander's  "  Ethics 
of  St.  Paul"  as  a  statement  of  the  true  ethical  Paulinism, 
so  I  take  Wrede's  "Paulus"  as  a  type  of  the  doctrinal 
Paulinism  subjected  to  present-day  criticism. 

For  myself  I  have  carefully  reviewed  the  "Paulus"  in 
detail,  and  the  little  I  shall  have  to  say  of  it  is  based 
upon  its  entire  position;  but  for  our  present  purpose 
I  need  not  go  beyond  the  single  pertinent  quotation  in 
the"  Ethics  of  St.  Paul."  Wrede's  thesis  is  the  not  mere 
difference  but  actual  contradiction  between  the  ethical 
positions  of  Paul  and  Jesus.  "The  preaching  of  Jesus 
is  direct  and  imperative :  man  is  to  submit  his  soul  to 
God's  will  without  reserve:  the  condition  of  his  salva- 
tion is  obedience:  it  is  simply  a  matter  of  personal 
(human)  decision."  "The  central  point  with  Paul  is  a 
divine  action  —  or  complex  of  actions:  the  Incarnation, 
Death  and  Resurrection  of  a  divine  being  —  which 
opens  to  mankind  a  salvation  prepared  for  man.  He 
who  believes  these  divine  acts  can  obtain  salvation." 
Running  through  the  entire  critique  there  are  two 
assumptions  carried  out  to  their  limit,  for  which  — 
as  has  been  confessed  —  there  is  only  too  much  excuse 
in  our  traditional  theology.  The  correction  of  these 


262  The  Reason  of  Life 

assumptions  is  due  to  St.  Paul,  and  is,  I  think,  the  debt 
of  our  present-day  thinking. 

The  first  of  these  assumptions  sees  in  the  Christ  of 
St.  Paul  the  act  of  an  entirely  and  exclusively  celestial, 
superhuman,  or  divine  person.  To  Wrede  the  so-called 
Life  in  the  Flesh,  the  Redemptive  Acts,  the  Death  and 
Resurrection  of  Christ  were  not  one  whit  more  human 
actions  than  the  antecedent  Incarnation. 

The  second  assumption  is,  on  the  human  side,  that 
our  relation  to  the  so-called  saving  acts  of  Christ  is 
wholly  an  external  one.  They  are  in  no  sense  our  acts, 
but  only  acts  performed  for  us,  in  which  our  sole  part 
is  to  believe  and  accept.  The  effect  of  these  two 
assumptions  is,  first,  to  separate  Christ  utterly  from 
us  in  His  work  of  active  salvation,  and  then  equally  to 
separate  us  from  Christ  hi  our  work  of  merely  passive 
salvation. 

On  the  contrary,  we  have  to  assert  that  the  very 
Incarnation  itself  was  not  a  one-sidedly  and  exclusively 
divine  act.  We  see  in  it  a  twofold  process  in  which 
not  only  is  God  at-one-ing  Himself  with,  incarnating 
Himself  in  humanity,  but  coequally  humanity  is,  in 
the  person  of  Christ,  at-one-ing  itself  with  God,  in 
furtherance  and  fulfilment  of  its  own  nature  and  end 
incarnating  God  in  itself.  It  would  not  be  difficult 
to  prove  that  the  divine  hah*  of  this  process  is  unmean- 
ing and  impossible  without  the  human  half.  No  man 
is  in  any  real  sense  taken  up  into  God  who  has  not  in 
the  process  wholly  taken  God  into  himself  —  and  done 
so  in  the  predestined  way  of  his  nature,  and  in  the  per- 


Theology  and  Ethics  263 

sonal  fulfilment  of  himself.  In  other  words,  an  actual 
incarnation  is  as  completely  an  act  of  man  as  of  God. 
Of  course  even  man's  part  is  God's  also  —  Who  is  All 
in  all;  but  so  is  all  our  life,  natural  as  well  as  spiritual, 
His  —  in  Whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being. 

So,  more  definitely,  the  redemptive  and  completive 
human  life  of  Jesus  was  not  one  whit  more  truly  the 
act  of  God  hi  His  person  than  it  was  the  act  of  humanity 
in  His  person.  God  redeems  or  completes  no  person 
except  in  and  through  the  act  of  his  own  self-redemp- 
tion or  completion.  Neither  can  we  redeem  ourselves 
without  God,  nor  can  God  without  us  —  in  an  act 
which  must  be  ours  as  well  as  His:  it  is  a  matter  of 
God  in  us,  which  can  mean  nothing  else  than  what  we 
are  and  do  and  become  through  Him  in  us. 

It  follows  that  Christ's  redemption  was  through 
death  only  because  His  death  —  the  death  He  died  — 
was  the  actual  and  sole  human  redemption;  and  His 
death  could  be  for  us,  only  as  it  could  be  and  would  be 
hi  us  and  of  us.  So  also  His  resurrection  is  ours,  only 
as  it  can  be  and  is  our  own  resurrection.  If  we  want 
to  understand  St.  Paul's  interpretation  of  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ,  we  must  understand 
them  in  a  sense  in  which  we  can  and  will  ourselves  enter 
in  and  share  them.  Christ's  death  and  resurrection 
must  be,  as  well  as  mean,  our  own. 

St.  Paul's  theology  is  just  as  ethical  as,  and  infinitely 
more  effectually  ethical  than  any  mere  ethics.  His 
God  is  essentially  an  ethical  God  —  rightly  defined, 
from  the  agnostic  standpoint,  as  "  The  Power  not  our- 


264  The  Reason  of  Life 

selves  that  makes  for  Righteousness."  The  law  of  His 
nature  is  the  law  of  His  will  for  us:  "The  Righteous 
Lord  loveth  righteousness."  And  it  is  the  law  of  His 
absolute  requirement  of  us:  "He  that  doeth  it  shall 
live  by  it,"  and  "  The  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die." 
That  is  only  the  expression  of  an  ontological  fact:  a 
being's  life  is  its  law,  and  its  law  is  its  life.  St.  John 
sees  in  Jesus  Christ  God  in  us  for  Life;  St.  Paul  sees 
in  Him  God  in  us  for  Righteousness.  But  they  ex- 
change terms:  St.  John's  life  is  righteousness  —  "Jesus 
Christ  the  Righteous";  St.  Paul's  righteousness  is  life 
—  "Christ  Who  is  our  Life."  He  is  either  because  He 
is  the  other.  St.  John,  more  implicitly  and  concretely, 
sees  the  result,  the  whole;  St.  Paul,  more  explicitly 
and  analytically,  sees  the  conditions,  the  process.  St. 
John  dwells  more  upon  the  Person,  St.  Paul  upon  the 
Work;  but,  if  we  look  deeply  enough  beneath  their 
differences,  they  give  us  the  same  Christ. 

St.  Paul's  theme  then  is  righteousness;  and  if  he 
makes  much  of  the  righteousness  he  preaches  as  being 
God's  and  not  our  own,  he  is  no  less  insistent  upon  the 
necessity  and  the  fact  of  its  becoming  our  own.  The 
great  question  with  him  is  not  so  much  —  as  with  St. 
John  —  the  What?  as  it  is  the  How?  of  righteousness 
and  life.  And  his  answer  to  it  is  hi  the  two  words 
Grace  and  Faith:  grace  covering  the  entire  act  or  part 
of  God,  and  faith  including  all  that  of  man  in  the 
divine-human  process  of  our  salvation.  The  insistence 
of  Christianity  upon  the  co-actual  Godhead  and  man- 
hood of  Jesus  Christ  means  that  we  must  see  in  Him 


Theology  and  Ethics  265 

that  completion  of  Grace  in  Faith  which  is  the  only 
perfected  Incarnation  of  God  in  man.  I  repeat  that 
the  man  in  whom  God  is  really  and  wholly  incarnate  is 
only  the  man  who  has  really  and  wholly  incarnated  God 
in  Himself. 

No  one  can  deny  that  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  Jesus 
Christ  is  Himself  the  righteousness  and  the  life  which 
He  offers  to  the  world.  He  is  the  Way  of  both  and  the 
Truth  of  both  —  there  as  much  as  in  St.  John  and  St. 
Paul.  He  was  lifted  up  upon  the  Cross  which  alone 
raiseth  us:  He  became  Son  of  God  in  power,  as  we  must, 
through  resurrection  from  the  dead.  The  beatitudes 
He  taught  He  had  Himself  learned  in  the  school  of 
human  life  —  the  blessedness  that  comes  from  the  true 
poverty  of  spirit,  from  the  right  sorrow  for  all  sin  and 
evil,  from  the  meekness  of  love  and  humility,  from  the 
hunger  and  thirst  for  righteousness,  from  mercy  to 
others,  from  purity  of  heart,  from  the  spirit  and  role 
of  the  peacemaker.  When  our  Lord  commends  these 
graces  of  spirit,  this  secret  of  blessedness,  He  speaks 
from  Himself:  He  says,  "Take  my  yoke  upon  you  and 
learn  of  me.  For  I  am  meek  and  lowly  in  heart,  and 
ye  shall  find  rest  for  your  souls."  It  is  impossible  to 
have  all  of  Jesus  in  ourselves  until  we  have  learned  to 
see  all  of  ourselves  in  Him  —  sin  only  excepted.  And 
the  sinlessness  of  Jesus !  —  it  is  not  that  sin  was  separate 
from  Him  in  our  nature,  but  that  He  was  self -separated 
—  which  means,  for  us  all,  God-separated  —  from  it. 

And,  how  self -separated?  It  is  not  that  there  was 
less  hi  Him  than  in  us  the  natural  deficiency  and 


266  The  Reason  of  Life 

weakness  of  mere  nature,  or  nature  by  itself.  Nature 
was  no  more  in  Jesus  than  in  us  capable  —  however  it 
may  be  susceptible — of  holiness,  righteousness,  or  eter- 
nal life.  Nor  was  Jesus  any  more  than  we  sufficient  of 
Himself  in  our  nature,  for  holiness,  righteousness,  or 
life.  When  He  took  our  nature  He  took  our  actual 
and  absolute  dependence  upon  God,  for  either  the  ful- 
filling our  nature  or  the  realization  of  ourselves.  Jesus 
needed  as  we  redemption  from  the  deficiency  of  nature 
and  from  the  insufficiency  of  self;  and  He  found  it 
where  only  it  is  to  be  found  —  in  faith  hi  God.  He 
could  say  with  St.  Paul,  "I  know  that  in  me,  that  is, 
in  my  flesh,  there  dwelleth  no  good  thing " :  as  indeed 
He  did  say,  "Why  callest  thou  me  good?  There  is 
none  good  but  one,  that  is  God."  It  is  not  that  there 
was  not  absolute  good  in  Jesus,  and  in  His  flesh.  But 
He  disclaimed  it  for  His  flesh  and  for  Himself  —  as  He 
always  did.  It  is  true  that  He  was,  unlike  St.  Paul, 
unconscious  in  Himself  or  in  His  flesh  of  any  evil  thing; 
but  it  was  because  God  was  so  in  Him,  the  grace  of  God 
was  so  perfected  through  His  faith,  that  sin  was  ex- 
cluded. The  triumphant  human  sinlessness  or  holiness 
of  Jesus  was  God's  condemnation  and  annulment  of  sin 
in  the  flesh,  and  the  redemption  wrought  in  and  by 
Him  is  made  ours,  not  only  by  our  faith  in  Him,  but 
by  the  in-working  of  His  all-conquering  faith  in  us. 

It  is  said  that,  while  Jesus  makes  so  much  of  the 
necessity  of  faith  in  us,  He  never  speaks  of  it  for  Him- 
self: the  implication  being  that  His  direct  knowledge 
is  without  the  intermediary  of  faith.  If  so,  He  was 


Theology  and  Ethics  267 

indeed  superhuman  beyond  any  participation  of  ours 
in  His  life  upon  earth;  but  the  truth  is  that  when  He 
says,  "I  speak  that  I  do  know,  and  testify  that  I  have 
seen,"  He  speaks  out  of  a  human  faith  that  has  become 
knowledge,  as  out  of  a  human  hope  that  has  attained 
to  actual  possession.  When  He  says,  "No  man  cometh 
unto  the  Father  but  by  me,"  He  means  that  He  has 
Himself  trodden  and  opened  every  step  of  the  way  by 
which  we  become  sons  through  knowing  the  Father. 

The  alpha  of  the  Gospel,  then,  is  that  Jesus  Christ 
is  Himself  the  Holiness,  Righteousness,  Eternal  Life 
which  He  gives  to  the  world.  He  is  the  "power  of 
God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  believeth," 
because  that  in  Him  is  revealed  "a  righteousness  of 
God  from  faith  unto  faith."  The  righteousness  re- 
vealed in  his  own  moral  perfection,  wrought,  not  in 
nature  alone,  nor  of  Himself  alone,  but  in  and  by  that 
oneness  with  God  which  it  is  the  function  of  faith  not 
so  much  to  effect  as  to  accept:  which  grace  alone  con- 
fers. The  righteousness  of  Jesus  is  the  redemption  of 
the  world  because  it  is  its  at-one-ment  with  God,  be- 
cause it  brings  humanity  into  participation  with  the 
source  and  power  of  its  life. 

The  human  attitude  toward  God  which  Jesus 
assumes  for  Himself  —  of  utter  dependence  and  perfect 
oneness  —  He  enjoins  upon  and  would  communicate 
to  all.  He  is  conscious  in  Himself  of  the  accomplished 
relation  and  character  into  which  that  attitude  brings 
Him.  In  Him  there  is  no  otherness  from  God,  and 
therefore  no  sin.  In  all  others  there  is  both;  but  the 


268  The  Reason  of  Life 

ground  and  reason  of  His  own  sinlessness  can  be  the 
only  remedy  and  cure  for  the  world's  sinfulness.  If 
God  is  the  only  freedom  of  the  spirit,  the  only  holiness, 
righteousness,  and  life  of  Him  who  has  found  these, 
then  is  He  equally  the  only  redemption  and  recovery 
of  those  who  have  lost  these.  In  the  essential  principle, 
Jesus  puts  Himself  precisely  upon  the  ground  of  the 
Publican  and  the  Prodigal:  that  they  were  sinners, 
and  He  alone  was  not,  were  opposite  operations  and 
results  of  a  common  alternative:  to  be  or  not  to  be  in 
and  of  God,  for  conduct  and  character,  is  holiness  or 
sin,  is  life  or  death.  He  was  human  holiness,  righteous- 
ness, and  life  —  because  He  sought,  not  His  own  will 
or  self,  but  God's  only  and  God:  He  did  nothing  and 
was  nothing  of  Himself:  His  Father  worked,  and  He 
worked:  He  and  His  Father  were  One,  and  their  com- 
mon work  was  human  redemption  and  salvation, 
human  righteousness  and  life.  His  resurrection  and 
ours  in  Him,  from  sin  and  death,  was  the  end  and  fruit 
of  that  joint  task  of  Deity  and  Humanity,  fulfilled 
each  in  the  other,  and  so  made  One.  All  we  the  rest 
are  sinners  insomuch  and  so  long  as  we  seek  ourselves 
and  not  God,  or  until  we  find  our  life  in  Him  and  not 
in  ourselves. 

Jesus  does  indeed  use  the  imperative:  He  warns  us 
that  not  one  jot  or  tittle  of  the  law  shall  pass  away 
until  all  be  accomplished :  He  bids  us  be  perfect  as  our 
Father  in  heaven  is  perfect;  because  He  knows  that 
nothing  short  of  that  is  our  salvation  and  our  life. 
But  He  does  not  (with  Wrede)  regard  human  obedience 


Theology  and  Ethics  269 

to  and  fulfilment  of  so  divine  a  law  as  a  matter  of  per- 
sonal decision  with  us,  and  leave  it  so.  Enunciation 
of  their  law  is  separated  from  actual  righteousness  and 
life  by  a  wider  chasm  than  mere  human  decision. 

The  doctrinal  system  of  St.  Paul,  upon  which  practi- 
cal Christianity  has  so  largely  been  built,  covers  mainly 
the  following  subjects :  Sin,  the  Law,  Grace,  Righteous- 
ness through  faith,  including  justification  by  faith; 
the  part  of  Jesus  Christ  hi  relation  to  all  these,  including 
Incarnation,  Death  and  Resurrection,  Redemption  and 
Completion.  Upon  all  these  points,  underneath  the 
great  differences  of  representation  and  exposition, 
there  is  an  actual  identity  of  mind  with  the  Jesus  of 
the  Gospels. 

Jesus  does  not  teach  the  sinfulness  of  human  nature 
as  such,  nor  of  human  selfhood  or  personality  as  such; 
but  He  does  teach  the  sinfulness  of  all  men  in  their 
nature  and  in  themselves:  the  fact  or  possibility  of  a 
righteousness  in  and  of  these  He  repudiates  as  abso- 
lutely as  St  Paul  does:  sin  is  as  universal  and  as  hu- 
manly incurable  with  the  one  as  with  the  other.  The 
very  term  salvation  implies  a  universal  condition  to  be 
saved  from :  Our  Lord  is  healer  of  the  sick,  sanctifier  of 
the  sinful;  and  He  is  so  because  He  is  God  in  them, 
their  health,  their  righteousness,  their  life. 

Human  righteousness,  with  Jesus  and  with  St.  Paul 
alike,  is  unattainable  and  non-existent  because  of  the 
absolute  spirituality  and  divineness  of  its  Law.  The 
law  of  man  is  the  spirit  and  the  mind  and  the  life  of 
God  Himself;  how  can  he  acquire  these  but  from  God, 


270  The  Reason  of  Life 

or  possess  them  but  in  God?  Jesus  and  Paul  are  at 
one  as  to  the  matter  or  content  of  the  one  law  of  God 
and  man :  it  is  eternal,  infinite,  perfect  Love.  To  have 
this  is  to  have  everything  —  but  how  are  we  to  have 
this?  It  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  "personal  decision" 
on  our  part.  We  can  love  God  only  as  He  first  loves 
us:  we  can  be  in  God  only  as  He  is  first  in  us:  we  can 
only  apprehend  that  for  which  we  have  been  first 
ourselves  apprehended  of  God. 

A  man  therefore  does  not  love,  is  not  righteous,  by 
law.  The  law,  as  such,  only  calls  upon  his  part,  it  does 
not  contribute  God's  part,  in  the  common  act  and  life 
of  love  and  righteousness.  He  has  a  part,  and  the 
function  of  the  law  in  calling  it  out  is  a  very  essential 
one;  but  in  doing  so  the  uttermost  reach  and  benefit 
of  the  law  is,  not  to  make  him  righteous,  but  to  reveal 
to  him  his  own  personal  incapability  of  righteousness: 
by  the  law  is  the  knowledge  of  sin,  and,  with  it,  the 
need  of  God,  which  is  the  necessary  condition  and 
beginning  of  religion.  This  is  wholly  the  mind  and 
attitude  of  Jesus,  told  in  the  language  of  Paul.  What 
does  our  Lord  Himself  say?  —  "I  am  not  come  to  call 
the  righteous,  but  sinners : "  He  knows  not  the  righteous; 
they  are  of  all  men  the  most  repellent  to  Him,  and  He 
to  them.  The  types  most  acceptable  to  Him  are  those 
whose  language  is,  "God,  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner!" 
and  "Father,  I  have  sinned  against  heaven  and  before 
thee,  and  am  not  worthy  to  be  called  thy  son." 

What  then  is  Grace?  It  is  simply  that  we  are  not 
to  bring  our  goodness  to  God,  but  to  bring  it  from  Him. 


Theology  and  Ethics  271 

He  is  not  our  Father  because  we  are  His  children;  but 
we  are  His  children  because  He  is  our  Father.  He 
does  not  love  us  because  we  love  Him,  but  we  love  Him 
because  He  first  loved  us.  In  our  relations  with  God 
we  are  to  come  to  Him  with  the  nothing  that  we  are, 
and  receive  from  Him  the  all  things  that  He  is.  Rather, 
as  our  Lord  teaches,  God  comes  to  us  in  His  person, 
with  all  that  He  is,  and  makes  it  all  ours  before  we  have 
come  to  Him:  Blessed  are  the  poor,  for  before  they  ask, 
before  they  have  known  their  poverty,  already  theirs 
is  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Heaven  is  not  ours  because 
we  win  it;  we  can  win  it  only  as  it  is  ours  and  in  us. 

The  attitude  of  the  Publican,  commended  of  our 
Lord,  in  contrast  with  that  of  the  righteous  Pharisee, 
as  the  proper  and  acceptable  posture  of  man  toward 
God,  is  not  one  of  indifference  to  or  independence  of 
righteousness.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  absolute  and 
the  sole  condition  of  righteousness;  "Blessed  are  the 
poor:  for  theirs,  and  theirs  only,  is  that  kingdom  of 
God  and  of  heaven,"  which  is  "righteousness  and  peace 
and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost."  "This  man  went  down 
to  his  house  justified  rather  than  the  other;"  God's 
justifications  are  based  upon  reason,  upon  essential 
grounds  and  conditions.  What  He  recognizes  in  the 
Publican  is  the  very  principle  and  condition  of  all  human 
righteousness,  knowledge  of  sin,  or  repentance,  and 
dependence  upon  God,  or  faith.  We  have  here,  in 
toto,  St.  Paul's  gospel:  Righteousness  not  by  law  but 
by  grace,  not  of  ourselves  but  of  God. 

We  have  in  the  typical  instance  of  the  Publican 


The  Reason  of  Life 

a  confusion  of  two  distinct  though  perfectly  related 
questions.  One  is  as  to  the  immediate  or  present  status 
of  the  sinner  upon  repentance  and  faith;  the  other  is 
the  ultimate  result  in  the  sinner  of  his  repentance  and 
faith.  To  say  that  God  justified  the  Publican  expresses 
all  of  principle  that  is  involved  in  the  later  doctrine  or 
justification  by  faith.  It  means  that  God  accepts  in 
us  that  elementary  condition  and  beginning  of  all 
righteousness  which  He  sees  in  our  initial  faith,  as  our 
sole  part  in  the  then  relations  between  us.  The  earthly 
father  takes  his  new-born  son  for  what  he  is.  The 
status  between  them  is  not  to  be  determined  by  what 
the  son  shall  be;  on  the  contrary,  what  the  son  shall 
be  ought  in  great  measure  to  be  determined  by  the 
existing  status  between  them.  We  are  in  God  for 
righteousness  and  life;  but  that  can  never  be  unless 
we  are  first  taken  into  God  without  righteousness  and 
life.  We  shall  never  be  in  Him  by  having  these;  we 
shall  certainly  have  these  by  being  in  Him. 

Justification  has  been  set  apart  to  mean  our  accept- 
ance in  God  for  righteousness  upon  the  sole  condition 
of  faith,  as  the  mean  of  the  reception  in  us  of  God's 
righteousness  and  life.  That  initial  status  of  grace  is 
never  to  be  separated  from  its  converse  truth:  if  we 
are  in  God  without  righteousness,  it  is  only  that  we 
may  be  in  Him  for  righteousness:  our  emptiness  is  for 
our  fulness.  Justification  by  faith  as  expressive  of  a 
present  or  initial  status  is  only  a  way  to  the  true  end 
of  actual  righteousness  through  faith.  It  is  through 
the  felt  want  of  righteousness,  through  hunger  and 


Theology  and  Ethics  273 

thirst  for  it,  through  faith  in  it  in  God,  through  hope  of 
it  in  ourselves,  through  persevering  and  prevailing  love 
of  it  as  God  has  given  it  to  us,  that  we,  from  faith  to 
faith,  from  grace  to  grace,  shall  attain  unto  the  glory 
which  is  righteousness  accomplished  and  life  attained. 

The  chief  seeming  differences  between  Jesus  and  St. 
Paul  are  not  differences  at  all,  but  only  harmonies  too 
deep  for  shallow  experiences.  St.  Paul  never  repeats 
Jesus'  teachings  or  recounts  His  acts;  he  has  gone  be- 
hind these,  and  is  doing  what  we  are  still  trying  to  do, 
interpret  Himself.  He  says,  as  we  do,  that  Jesus  is 
Himself  what  He  teaches  and  does.  He  is  God's  love, 
God's  grace,  God's  fellowship  with  us  Incarnate: 
therefore  He  is  also  our  holiness,  our  righteousness, 
our  life.  The  divine  righteousness  revealed  in  Him 
for  us  and  as  ours  is  the  accomplished  fact  of  God  and 
man  at  one  by  grace  through  faith,  and  one  in  the  power 
of  grace  and  the  holy  obedience  of  faith. 

Without  the  Incarnation  what  follows  is  impossible; 
with  it  what  follows  is  included  and  predestined.  But 
what  follows  is  not  only  an  act  of  God  in  us,  it  is  wholly 
also  an  act  of  us  in  God:  and  that  act  is  the  one  thing 
on  our  part  that  effects  our  oneness  with  God  and  con- 
stitutes our  redemption  and  salvation,  our  resurrection 
and  eternal  life.  That  which  is  at  once  the  gift  of  God 
and  the  act  of  man  in  Jesus  Christ  is  expressed  by  our 
Lord  Himself  as  "repentance  and  remission  of  sin,  to 
be  preached  in  His  name  unto  all  the  nations."  Re- 
pentance is  nothing  else  than  that  attitude  towards  sin 
which,  when  carried  to  its  limit  or  made  complete,  is 
19 


274  The  Reason  of  Life 

the  death  to  it  which  Jesus  Christ  Himself  died.  The 
remission  of  it  is  not  only  God's  but  also  man's  own 
effectual  putting  it  away,  by  its  death  in  him  and  his 
death  to  it.  On  the  other  hand,  faith  is  that  attitude 
and  disposition  towards  God  which,  carried  to  its 
limit  or  made  perfect,  is  oneness  with  Himself  and 
participation  in  His  holiness,  righteousness,  and  life; 
and  which  as  such  is  resurrection  from  the  sin  and  death 
to  which  we  are  subject  in  ourselves  alone. 

The  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  are  the 
natural  and  necessary  consummation  of  the  miracle  of 
His  life.  They  but  reveal  Him  to  us  as  the  Jehovah- 
Tsidhkenu,  the  Lord  our  Righteousness,  Who  is  the 
end  of  all  religion  from  the  beginning,  and  the  predesti- 
nation of  humanity  in  God. 


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